Latrunculi
by Roadie-N60
Summary: A new slave, barely conscious and beaten to within an inch of her life, is deposited in a cell beneath Warren Bering's famed ludus gladiatorus. None who work in the ludus know who she is or why she's there; they can only treat her wounds and await explanations from the Dominus upstairs. But the slave has her own plan-one where the Dominus' eldest daughter plays a central role.
1. Fever Dreams

Note:

Hi, I've been commenting around here as "Roadie" for awhile so I figured I'd post this thing I've been writing.

This idea came to me after stumbling across a mind-bogglingly good Rome AU WIP by pbandfluff on tumblr (I can't link it, but if you go to pbandfluff dot tumblr dot com, it's tagged "the one where they're in capua"), which you should totally read if you haven't. I borrowed the ancient Rome idea, the ludus setting, and the second-person POV from that story, but everything else is pretty drastically different.

I don't know much about ancient Rome. I'm prioritizing storytelling over historical accuracy. Also, I'm keeping the characters' original names rather than trying to Latin-ify them, just 'cause I am.

No beta.

* * *

The floor beneath your cheek, your belly, your bloody palms is cold stone. You have been lying here for hours or months and the surface of your skin is burning sunfire, your back melting like the wax of Icarus' wings. Like the cold core of you, this stone swallows your heat but never warms. You tremble. Tremble. Tremble.

Close your eyes, surrender to darkness again.

\\

_You float on your back in the lake near your parents' home. Little waves curl over your shoulders, lap at your earlobes, your forehead. Sun rays broach thick clouds, painting you in light._

_Long tendrils of water-plants brush your shoulderblades. You don't mind._

_\\_

Cold. So cold. Wet and cold at your back. Cold that kills your aches to give birth to new pain. Icicles growing from your bones, splitting through your muscles. Your cracked, swollen lips part and sound escapes from somewhere inside you.

Something moves. A face—young, dark-skinned, with kind eyes—drops into your line of sight.

"Can you hear me?" The voice is soft, rich. She speaks the language with the accent of a slave from the southern territories of the empire, across the sea.

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again, without words. Wetness trickles down the side of your nose, into the crease of your lips. It might be salty, or not.

Your tongue is hard, porous, unfeeling as limestone.

\\

_Something splashes near you and you frantically kick yourself upright, away from the noise and the danger. You turn your head like a crazed person before you spot the short bit of wood floating a few feet away. _

_You kick your legs and turn back to the beach and your brother is there, clutching his stomach, doubled over in mirth. The breeze carries the sound of his laughter to you. __You smile, start paddling back toward him. He's _SO_ going to get it._

\\

Between fever-dreams, spoons are pressed to your lips. Liquids trickle to the back of your throat. Broth, milk. Cool water soothes the burning roof of your mouth.

You don't want any of it. But, too weak to resist, you swallow, dutifully.

\\

_His eyes meet yours and his smile vanishes. Suddenly, your brother is not a boy but a man, and blood is dripping out of his eyes, his throat, his chest._

_You scream his name—CHARLES!—but he has turned to dust on the shore._

_\\_

"It's not enough."

Your eyes, slits, make out the woman, crouched near your face. Her palm, cold against your too-hot cheek.

"If I had the herbs I needed to draw the infection out, then maybe I could help," she says. "She needs a doctor. Otherwise, she will die."

Footsteps. Another pair of sandals before your eyes. The second body crouches beside the first and it belongs to another woman. Gallic, probably. Pale skin and red hair. Younger, scarcely more than a girl.

Pressure, light, over your scalp.

"I'll ask the _Domina_," says the second girl. "She might be willing to help."

Your lips part, throat working, as you try to make sound. The first woman notices, drops her face close to yours, her ear to your lips.

"Can you speak?" she asks, gently. "What can you tell me?"

You force your throat to form rough words.

"Please," you whisper, in the language of the masters. "Please. Let me die."

The hand moving over your scalp pauses. The second woman, the young one, says, "I'm going to ask _Domina_ right now."

Your eyes, lips, close again. _Please_, your mind begs, _just let me die._

_\\_

_You begin to swim madly for the shore, for where your brother was. But the soft tendrils of water-weeds aren't weeds at all. They're hands that grab your ankles, your wrists, pulling you back. _

_Frantic, you fight._

_More hands wrap around your thighs, your waist, your neck, your shoulders pulling you down, down, down. Just before your eyes broach the water's surface you realize it's not water at all. It's lava, thick and orange and broiling, searing its way through your skin._

_\\_

Three voices, now. The first two, and a third that speaks the masters' language with the pitch and flow of aristocracy.

Your lids pull at the crust of sickness and the torch glows bright, too bright, it burns with light as your back burns with fire.

The feet near your face wear a soldier's footwear but this new voice belongs to a woman. A Roman woman, then, who plays at soldiers; a parody of what you were before you became… this.

Fingers slide under your cheek and tip your head upward. The eyes that meet yours are green, glowing in your fever-gaze.

"What did she do to merit this punishment?" The aristocrat. Her eyes are emerald spear-points grazing your body. Not judging, but deciding whether to judge.

"We don't know." The voice of the second girl.

"She came to us like this three days ago, _Domina_." The first woman. "I thought it might heal if we kept it clean but the sickness was too far progressed."

The Roman's fingers are warm against the back of your neck, touching the prominent vertebra. It sings to the cold within you, the cold that makes you shudder without cease against the stone.

"It would have been kinder to kill her than to whip her to this point," the aristocrat murmurs. "She must have done something terrible." She speaks like all Romans do: like you are a bitch to be punished or put down, all while she touches your face with warm fingers.

A foggy part of your brain finds its way back into place. It forces your shoulders, arms, your screaming back into action. Your palms push on the ground, your body lifts.

"Child?" The soft voice of the woman from across the sea. "My child, lie still. You'll hurt yourself further—"

You let loose a growl that sends all three women falling back. Shakily, on your hands and knees, you turn your face to the Roman, who kneels nearest your head. She wears a man's toga. A sword at her hip grazes the dirt on the floor. Green, alarmed eyes—eyes that have never known fear—lean closer to you.

Words echo in your mind: _May the gods rain fire on all Roman filth_.

You make another noise deep in your throat and you _spit_. It lands on her cheek, to the right of her nose.

The voices of the two slaves sound immediately:

"_Domina_, forgive her, she has the fever—"

"Lady Myka, she doesn't know what she does—"

You stare at the green-eyed woman. She brings a hand to her cheek, wipes away your spittle, and then wipes her fingers against the dirty stone wall.

"I will get you your herbs," she says, eyes inscrutable. "And I will see if the healer from the _Ludus_ can see her today."

Relieved, infuriated, you fall back to the welcoming grasp of the stone floor.

\\

_The hands that grip you grow out of the fiery darkness._

_Bodies emerge, attached to them. Men's bodies, first in Roman soldiers' armor, then in the togas of Roman citizenry. Men of all sizes, shapes, ages, and the occasional women, their hands scrabbling out for you. Coarse fingers insinuate themselves between your thighs, aiming for your sex but your body finds strength to revolt. Rough fingers force their way into your mouth and hook themselves behind your teeth, digging in._

_You bite down, hard, and an echo of laughter pushes its way into your ears, through the fire._

_Your skin wants to melt off your body._

_\\_

The fire-wrought adzes of a million tiny carvers gouge channels through the ruined flesh of your back and you rear up, howls wrenching themselves from deep in your chest. Pressure on your wrists, your ankles, pushes you down and you fight, fight, fight, because surely what little skin remains on your back is being ripped away by a Roman determined to leave nothing left of you this time.

Your eyes, heavy-lidded, drift open and through the blur of your tears you can see a woman's feet wearing men's sandals, planted between your outstretched arms. Beside them, firm hands press your wrists into the dirt.

_Damned Romans and their endless lust for blood and pain._

A moment's respite, and you breathe, harshly, through the lingering sting. The grip on your left wrist loosens and you feel a hand move up, down, up your forearm, in a gesture that might feel comforting were it not attached to those blasted Roman sandals.

"Again." A voice far above her. Not Roman. Gallic, but not the girl from before. "Hold her."

The grip tightens on your wrists again. Something touches your back and you scream.

\\

_You wrestle the hands but there are too many of them, reaching for, claiming, covering every inch of you. One hand—long, thin fingers—reaches toward you through the mass. A body follows it. A woman's body, grey-haired, old enough to be your mother. _

_You know that woman._

_Her five fingers come to touch the center of your chest and __**press**__. They push through the skin, in between your lungs, wrap themselves around your heart, and pull. __She holds the organ up before your eyes and you watch it beat. __Then, slowly, she brings it to her mouth, sinks her teeth into its pointed base._

"_I always did love a good beef heart," she says. "Such a delicacy." You watch as she consumes the whole thing._

_Then the hands are gone, the lava is gone, the woman is gone, and you are adrift in space. Your chest is a hollow cavern, perfectly, exquisitely numb._

_\\_

Your mind wraps itself around the sound of dripping water, echoing from far away across the stone walls, pinging like a snapped bowstring. You listen to it, focus on it, allow your lucidity to find its home there.

You blink. Blink. Blink.

The first thing you see is your fingertips resting on the ground near your face. Your nail beds are grey with dirt but the back of your hand looks clean.

Beneath your hand is a rough linen cloth. You feel its weave under your cheek. You are lying on your stomach on the floor of a small, bare room. Your shoulders are rotated a little so your right arm crosses under you, both hands before your face, which rests on its right side.

You come aware of a light weight on your back. Then, you come aware of the pain – dull, distant, no longer burning—in your back. You shift, a little, so the fingers of your right hand can walk carefully over your left shoulder, reaching to feel—

"Don't touch it."

You freeze, gaze twitching to the doorway near your feet. You recognize the woman there as the one from across the sea. She carries a waterskin and a handful of rags.

You open your mouth and your jaw, tongue, try and fail to make words. Your lips are so, so dry.

The woman kneels near your face and sets the cloths on the floor beside her.

"Here," she says. She uncorks the water-skin and brings the opening to your lips, carefully adjusting the angle to control the flow. Your thirsty body welcomes the offering and it thanks you by pulling your consciousness fully into place. When you have drunk your fill, the woman re-corks the water-skin and sets it on the ground beside her.

"Better?" she asks. She has the kindest eyes you've seen in years.

You lick your lips. "Yes," you say quietly. "Thank you."

A thin blanket covers you, and she lifts it away.

"It's a poultice," she offers. "On your back. Willow, to draw out the sickness and help it heal."

Your eyes close again. Of course, they have healed you. You were too ill to force them not to.

"It's important not to disturb it," the woman continues. "Tomorrow, the doctor will return to apply a fresh one. Your wounds are healing well."

"Hmm," you say, because you can't thank her for something you know you can't escape despite how little you want it. She is kind, and you are only almost too broken to turn your back on kindness from a fellow prisoner.

She wets one of the rags with water from the water-skin and begins to wipe your face, and then your arms.

You force your jaw to work again. "What is your name?" you ask.

"Leena," she says, with a soft smile. "And yours?"

"Helena," you murmur.

"Helena," she repeats. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

She moves to run the cloth over your lower legs. "In another seven days, you should be healed enough to visit the bath. We have been doing our best to keep you clean this way."

"Thank you," you say, softly.

"Everyone deserves a little dignity." She wets her rag again. "Even a beaten slave."

She's making small talk, you know. Empty words to fill the space while she works. But her words burn nonetheless.

"Tell that to the man who had me beaten," you reply.

Her movements hitch and she finishes her work in silence.

"I'm glad to see you awake," she says, as she packs up her items. "I'll see if I can get some beeswax for your lips. Rest, now, Helena."

After the door closes, you close your eyes. Your sleep, this time, is dreamless.


	2. Latrunculi

The next time the door opens, the Roman is there.

She walks into the room a step behind the young red-haired Gaul, who carries a tray of something that smells like food. Again, the Roman wears men's sandals and a short men's toga, her hair tied into a tight knot at the back of her head, a gladius slung low on her hip. The Gaul crosses the room quickly, setting the tray on the floor near you; the Roman follows in long, easy strides, and crouches near your face.

"The sleeper awakes," she says, green eyes sparkling at you like candles on the road to Hades.

Her smile, crooked and dimpled, sneers at you. You can see yourself diving at her, digging your nails into the flesh of that aristocratic face and rending the skin from the bone. You wouldn't kill her, though. You would send her out to walk the streets of Rome as a warning for what happens when you cross Helena Wells, warrior of Brittany turned slave of the Roman Empire.

But you can do none of this now. You can barely move, now. You shift your gaze to the Roman's unwieldy, oversized gladius.

Fingers, on your cheek, push your hair behind your ear and you imagine grabbing those fingers and snapping each one for the insolence of being so familiar with your body. Your eyes flash up to meet hers with what is, you hope, the most terrifying glare she's ever seen. Her brow does flinch, a little, and the smile falls from her face. An answering grin grows inside you, but you suppress it, firming your lips into a line.

"What is your name, slave?" the Roman asks.

You stare at her.

"Perhaps she doesn't speak Latin?" she ponders, still looking at you but her question offered to the slave-girl beside her.

"She does, Domina," the Gaul says. "She spoke it in her fever."

In the corner of your eye, you see the young girl's gaze move from you to the Roman and back again.

"Leena told me her name is Helena," she says, eventually.

"Helena," the Roman repeats, high-bred diction curving over the syllables. She smiles again. "Well, Helena, my name is Myka, and my father owns this ludus. This is my hand-maiden, Claudia."

Your eyes shift to Claudia. It's a lovely name for a lovely-seeming girl.

The Roman reaches for the bowl of broth and slides it across the floor so that it rests between you. Carefully, she ladles up a small spoonful, blows lightly on it to cool it, and offers it to your lips. You meet her eyes again, and keep your mouth closed.

"All right," she says, as she returns the spoon to the bowl, "no broth, then. Some bread, perhaps?" She picks up a roll from the tray, tears off a small piece, and offers that to your lips, but you only tighten them. You will not be fed from the hand of a Roman.

The Roman smirks a little, lip quirking up to the side. "Well, Claudia, it seems to me that Helena here doesn't care much for me."

She drops the bread back onto the tray, and runs the back of her hand over your cheek.

"Very well, Helena," she says, "I will leave you in Claudia's hands for now, but I'll be back to check on you tomorrow." She squeezes the handmaiden's shoulder before leaving your cell.

Claudia watches her leave, then shifts to kneel closer to your face. Without preamble, she lowers a spoonful of broth to your lips, which part easily for her. It's rich, warming, flavorful. She offers you another spoonful, and you accept that, too.

"You know," the girl says, eventually, "I get what's going through your head, but she's one of the good ones."

You let your raised eyebrows stand in for a response.

"The Lady Myka," the girl clarifies. "She can be a bit of a stick in the mud-I mean, she's still a Roman—but… she cares for people. Even if they're her slaves."

"Hmm," you reply.

She finishes feeding you in silence, but you thank her, as honestly as you can, as she picks up the tray to leave.

\\

The subsequent days are like this. The ludus healer—a tall, Gaulish woman whose voice is faintly familiar—visits you, stripping your poultice to inspect your back, and applying fresh leaves to your skin, held in place by bandages wrapped around your torso.

"Last round," she says. "In two days we'll take this off to let the wounds dry so the scars can form."

Claudia and Leena bring you twice-daily meals. At first it's broth and bread, but as your condition improves they bring you cheese for the bread, and soups with meat and vegetables.

Your strength begins to return. You can raise to a sitting position, first for short periods, and then for longer ones. You can feed yourself, but Claudia and Leena sit with you when they can, to keep you company. They give you information about where you are, and how you came to be here.

Where you are, it turns out, is in a cell of a highly-respected ludus belonging to Warren Bering, who keeps a stable of his own gladiators and rents out training and housing for fighters belonging to other nobles. You were brought here by servants from elsewhere (_you know where_). Nobody knew who they were, or where they came from (_you know who, and where_), but they brought you and no-one else. No other new slaves arrived that day. Claudia and Leena still don't know what your purpose in the _ludus_ is to be.

Leena, the slave who keeps the gladiators' quarters in the _ludus_, was told to care for your wounds, nurse you back to working health. You had been scourged so severely, there was little left of the skin between your shoulderblades and the small of your back. The wound was already infected, the sickness overwhelming your body. Lady Myka sent the healer to you.

The ludus' healer is a Gallic slave named Vanessa, the wife of Artie, a Dacian, who oversees the gladiators' training. She treated your wounds with _acetum, _a potent, burning liquid. It took three people—Leena, Claudia, and the _Domina_—to hold you down through the pain of the application, but between that, the poultice, and the renewing teas prescribed by the doctor, you have overcome the sickness and your wounds are healing nicely.

The Roman, Myka, visits you every day. She crouches, sits, reclines on the floor opposite you. She doesn't always wear men's clothing, you learn. Sometimes she comes to you in the long, flowing dresses more typical of her sex and status. She asks you questions about yourself, your past, your recovery, your meals. You meet her gaze evenly, but offer her not a word.

\\

Leena and Claudia ask you why you were beaten. "Because the Romans are pigs who may beat us when they wish," you reply.

They ask you where you came from. "Brittany," you say. No, they reply, they mean, where did you come from before you came to the ludus.

You withhold your answer. You are a Celtic warrior, fearsome with the spear and the bow. You are your parents' daughter and your brother's sister. You will not degrade those truths by sharing where you have lived, what you have been forced to do, during the past six years of your enslaved life.

You will not share that you were made to give your body to every person with the desire and the coin to pay your _Dominus_. That you lived in a building full of women and men forced into the same labour.

No. You will take those memories and bury them deep, alongside other memories you desperately wish did not define the scraps of person you have become.

\\

You have never been so bored.

Your mind is healed, your back is healing, your strength is growing. You can sit upright for hours at a time but your legs, so long disused, fail to support you on their own. With Claudia and Leena's aid, you make it to the bath at the ludus where you clean yourself, fully, for the first time in an age. It makes you feel closer to human and without thinking, you stand in the water, without help. Almost immediately your head spins and you fall back with a splash.

Part of you wishes there had been no water there to catch you. Part of you wishes your head could have hit the stone edge of the pool.

In your cell, you begin to pass the time by playing strategy games with yourself, scratched into the dirt of the floor with your fingernail. You play both sides, challenging yourself to best yourself, but it's difficult in the dirt, without playing pieces.

You decide to try, again, to stand, in your cell this time. Your fingers creep up the wall, latching themselves into crevices and seams between the stones. But just as you reach your full height, your knees twitch and buckle and you and you fall toward the center of the room, torso bouncing off the ground. It's far from the worst pain you've endured, but as you lie, alone, in the middle of your cell, something about it overwhelms you.

You cry for the first time in weeks, and wonder which of the gods hates you so much that they refuse to release you into the afterlife.

Of course, it's the Roman who finds you there, hours later. She slips her hands under your shoulders and helps to move you back to your blanket. For the first time, she doesn't attempt to engage you in conversation. Your tears have long since dried.

\\

The Roman shows up the next day with a board under one arm and a small sack in the other. She sets them on the ground between you, where you sit cross-legged on your blanket. She's dressed in the men's sandals and short toga, again, today.

"I know you're bored," she says, trailing her fingers over the scratch marks your fingers have left in the dirt. She opens the sack and dumps a pile of black and white stones onto the ground. "I brought a game. I thought we could play."

You stare back at her, impassively, as is your custom.

"We call this _Latrunculi_," she says, as she lays the stones out on the board. "Perhaps you know it? It's a strategy game. The goal is to immobilize the opponent's pieces by entrapping them with your own."

She continues to explain the rules, hands moving pieces across the grid to illustrate different points. You feel something pull at the edges of your eyes as your mind wraps around strategies, imagines setups and takedowns. You notice, absently, that her right hand is callused from sword-work.

She pushes the pieces back to their starting positions as she winds up her instructions.

"So," she says, "the first move is yours."

You look at the board, then up at her, her green eyes sparkling in the dim light. Your mouth opens, closes, opens again, mind warring with itself.

"Why are you doing this?" you ask, in her language. Your first words to her.

The smile that breaks across her face is almost contagious. Almost. "You intrigue me," she replies.

You have long known that you have no will to live. You would take your own life were it not for the shame such a deed would inspire in your family. You want them—the Romans—to kill you. You wish it desperately. But you want to take as many of _them_ with you as you can.

This Myka, with her sparkling moss-coloured eyes and easy smile, reeks of innocence.

She, then, will be your sacrifice. She is your avenue to the ultimate freedom.

You lay your finger on one of the white pieces on your side of the board and make your first move.


	3. Skin

The Roman brings the board to your cell every day and you play for an hour, sometimes two, occasionally longer.

You are careful about your victories: you win occasionally, but not often. After your first three games, you realize you could beat her almost every time. You are exceptional at anything that involves strategy. Your father taught you everything he knew, when you were a child, and by the time you'd reached your sixteenth year, when the Romans were pressing closer and closer to your lands, you were among the most effective military strategists in your city.

Nobody knew that, of course. The elders would never have listened to a girl. So you would tell your plans to your brother, Charles, and he would present them for you. The accolades came to him, with you, always behind his shoulder, his valiant sister-in-arms.

At your twenty-sixth year, after a decade of deferring to your better instincts, Charles tired of taking your guidance and insisted he could develop his own battle strategies.

The first time, his plan worked. The second time, two-thirds of your army was killed and the remaining third taken prisoner. Charles counted among the dead. So did your lover, Wolcott. Had you known you would spend your next year on the road and in the Roman marketplace, and the following six years enslaved in a Roman brothel, you would have fallen on your sword to join them, gods' repercussions be damned.

But now, your skills in military tactics translate well to this game of _latrunculi_. Often, as you play, you decide upon your own best move and then upon the move Charles would have made. You make Charles' move every time. The Lady Myka is a strong strategist as well—her armies would have defeated Charles', you think bemusedly, but not your own. Still, she makes it easy for your losses to seem inadvertent.

"You're a very strong player at this game," you say to her, one day.

"I've been playing since I was a child," she replies. "My father hates it."

"Why?" you ask.

"He says it's not appropriate for a lady."

Your gaze shifts to her soldier's sandals and the gladius on her hip. "It seems there is much about you that is not… appropriate for a lady."

She smiles at that. "Indeed."

You cock an eyebrow, waiting for more.

"Pete, one of the trainers here, has been coaching me in swordsmanship for many years," she says. "Usually, when I visit you, it's before or after I meet with him, and dresses aren't convenient for practice."

"Why would a noblewoman such as yourself wish to train in combat?" you ask, giving her a look which, you hope, is an appropriate mix of scandalized and intrigued.

It seems to work. She smiles and looks down. "I enjoy it," she says. "And I. . . don't like to feel helpless."

"It's admirable," you say, as you slide your Eagle across the board in a gesture that seems evasive, but where you know she will pin it in five moves.

\\

Your back is at that late stage of healing where scabs turn to scars, and their itch is almost unbearable. During your game, the _Domina_ notices your discomfort and asks you about it.

Later that day, Claudia visits your cell carrying a small pot of salve. The pot is ornate and you know it is not from the medical stores of the _ludus_.

"For the itching," Claudia says.

The lovely Roman has taken your bait.

\\

The healer says you must begin to walk. Claudia and Leena stop by once each every day and brace you as you walk slow circles around your small room. _Domina_ does it, too. At the end of your daily matches, she slips her arm beneath your shoulders and lets you lean heavily on her as your knees wobble, working to remember how to support you.

"You're showing such fantastic improvement," she says to you. Her hand slides from your ribs down to your hip, shifting you higher, closer as you slowly move across the room.

"Thank you, _Domina_." You let your fingers tighten around her bicep.

\\

"I believe that's game," she says, as she slides her final piece into place. She's not looking at the board—she's smiling cockily at you, her eyes trained on your face for your reaction.

Your hand reaches out to cover hers before she can lift her fingers from the stone.

"Indeed," you reply, "that's game." You pick her hand up and turn it palm-up in yours. It's her sword hand, and your fingers trace over the calluses along her fingers, across her palm. Your eyes flit up to her face and she's not smiling anymore. Her lips are parted, gaze fixed on your fingertips. You trace a fingernail down one of the long creases of her palm, and her nostrils flare.

"Such a beautiful swordsman's hand," you murmur, before you bring your lips down to her pale palm, letting them linger there.

Her breath hitches. You bring your kiss to the tip of her first and second fingers, pressed together. Then to the soft inside of her wrist. Her forearm. Her elbow. The movement brings you closer to her, around the game board where she has trapped all of your pieces. Your hand wraps around her wrist and you feel her pulse thundering there, faster and faster.

You trail your nose over the fabric of the toga that covers her shoulder. Your lips—soft, now, from the beeswax that Leena brought you—press gently to the curve of the base of her neck. You feel her harsh intake of breath against your shoulder, and you open your mouth, wetting her skin with your tongue.

A strangled sound comes from her throat, just inches from your lips, and you feel her arms wrap themselves around you. She falls back on to the blanket and pulls you with her, fingers of one hand slipping themselves into your hair, cradling your head as your teeth and tongue pepper her neck.

"Helena," she gasps, when you latch on to her earlobe. You flick its sensitive tip with your tongue and her hips press upward into yours; you shift so that your thigh settles between hers and you give her an answering push down.

Your fingers drift downward, finding the opening of her toga and beginning to pull the cloth apart, when her hands bring themselves to both sides of your head and lift you away.

"Helena," she says softly, the irises of her green eyes dilated, nearly blackened with desire. "Helena, I—I hope you're not doing this because… I know some _domini_ demand… things… of their slaves but I hope you know that I… I would never…"

You quirk your eyebrows at her. She swallows, combs her fingers through your hair, tries again: "You have no duty to share your body with me, Helena. I would never demand that of you. If we… if we do this, it has to be because you want it, too."

You smile at her with your lips and bring them to touch hers before she can see it doesn't reach your eyes. Her mouth opens hungrily to yours and she pulls at the belt of your simple tunic even as she arches up to give you space to untangle her from her toga. Your lips leave hers flushed and swollen to latch themselves to her neck, again, as your fingers trail down to caress her chest, her abdomen. When you cover her breasts with your palms she whimpers and arcs up to you, covers your hands with hers. She likes this, then. You play—first gently, and then firmly—with her nipples, until her entire form is taut and melodious as the tuned skin of a war drum. She wants this—wants _you_—so badly that when your fingers slip between her legs, when they ease inside her, your thumb need only circle once, twice, three times before she comes apart beneath you, teeth sunk into the flesh of her own forearm, your lips mouthing at the inside swell of her breast.

You shift to roll onto your side, beside her, but she stops you with a hand on your hip. Her eyes blink back into focus and her fingers slide back and down your thigh as she encourages you to lift your knee, and then she's sitting up under you and your legs are parted over her lap. You didn't expect this—for her green eyes to gaze up at you, wide and trusting and wanting, brow furrowed as she watches you while her touch travels your skin. She watches for smiles and shudders, for the dilation of your pupils, for the sounds and shivers that say _yes, there, right there. _

She is inexperienced at this, you can tell, but not a complete novice. Her lack of finesse is compensated by her earnestness. She licks and teases delicately at your breasts while her hands caress your sides and buttocks. Your head tips forward against her shoulder when her hand trails down your stomach and between your thighs. She cups you gently, then wets two fingers in her mouth and slides them over your clitoris. It's been a long, long time since you last did this with someone who cared about your pleasure and you let yourself sink into her tenderness. Your still-weak thighs burn as your hips move against her hand, and her mouth presses warmth behind your ear. You reach down to guide her fingers to exactly the right place.

"Is this good?" she asks, and you respond by biting her shoulder and rocking once, twice more against her touch before your orgasm, short and rich, overtakes you.

You move to recline together on the blanket, on your sides facing one another. She has covered you both with the second blanket. She smiles fondly at you. Long strands of her hair have come loose from her tight knot, and you twirl one of them between your fingers.

"That was…" she says, and shakes her heads like she has no words. Her fingernails trace up and down your forearm.

"I know." You grin at her, conspiratorially. You lie quietly for a moment, and then you ask, "If you don't mind my asking, _Domina_—"

"Myka," she cuts in. You raise your eyebrows at her, and she clarifies: "Lying here like this, after what we've done, is not a time for titles. You should call me by my name. And, please, ask your question."

You nod, once, demurely. "This wasn't your first time, was it?" You know it wasn't. You've endured enough first times to know what those feel like. But she doesn't know that, and you know she's not married. There are strong prohibitions in Rome against sex outside of marriage for women.

She smiles a little, sadly, and rolls onto her back. You wonder if you've upset her, and the possibility that you've so easily brought a flash of pain to the heart of a Roman lights a flare of pride in your chest. But it wouldn't do to perform that, so you pull your lips into a frown and murmur, "I'm sorry, _Domina_—Myka—I didn't mean to offend, or to pry."

"No," she says, "It's fine." She lies quietly for a moment and you watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket. "I was engaged to be married, once," she says, finally.

"Oh?" you ask.

"Sam was a wonderful man. Kind, and smart, and handsome. He respected me, respected my interests. He was the one who first taught me to handle a gladius." Her face offers a small smile. You lean forward and rest your chin on her shoulder; she carefully curls her arm around your back.

"He was in the army. A truly talented soldier, climbing the ranks. When we became engaged, he was set to be promoted to oversee a fortress on the borderlands of the empire, in Gaul. We were going to travel there together. But before we could be married he was called away to settle a Germanic uprising just north of here." She's blinking faster now. "Apparently the battle was far more difficult than anyone anticipated," she says, finally. "Our army won, but many good soldiers died."

She leaves it there, lets you make the tiny connection between her sentences. You cannot help but wonder how many Germanic casualties fell to the near-unstoppable Roman military.

"We were together a few times, after we were engaged and before he left," she finishes. "It was five years ago."

"I'm so sorry," you say, and her face indicates that she believes you.

You lie quietly for a moment, and you're feeling rash so you begin again: "If I may ask another question, _Domina_—"

"Myka," she says firmly, squeezing you closer. "And yes, of course."

"Was this your first time with—"

"—a woman?" she finishes for you. "No."

"I was going to say a slave, actually."

She lies quietly for a long time. You think she won't answer, and you won't press. Just as you've given up, she takes a deep breath, and says, "No, it's not my first time with a slave, either."

You can't help but tense up before you can convince yourself to relax.

"It's not what you think," she says. "I—gods, I shouldn't be telling you this. If people knew…"

"Come, now," you say, with the best smile you can muster. "Who could I possibly tell? And who would believe me if I did?"

She closes her eyes and lies still for a long moment, and again, you think she will not continue. But, again, she takes a deep breath, and says, quietly, "I went to a brothel once."

Your force your body to remain relaxed, to subdue the reflex of revulsion and flight that strikes you.

"Which one?" It's an improperly abrupt question, but you _need_ to know. You wonder briefly if it's possible she might have been in your bed sometime in the past; if her face could have disappeared into the litany of faces with whom you… spent time.

Her head turns and she looks at you. Her brow furrows, and you can all but see the pieces sliding in her head, drawing conclusions about you and your past.

"Sykes,'" she says, eventually. "Across the city, where nobody knew me and I could be discreet."

You let out a breath. You were at McPherson's, though you knew some women who had worked for Sykes before McPherson bought them.

Her eyes narrow a little as she gazes at you, like she's trying to see through your eyes to the whirling mind behind them.

"I was overwhelmed with grief, after Sam," she says, as she lies back again. "And I was so lonely, so desperately lonely. So… I went. I asked for a woman because it seemed safer, less scandalous. She was beautiful, and she was tender with me. Her touch felt wonderful, but... it was different. Without desire for the other person, it just felt rehearsed, somehow. Hollow. Not like with Sam." She pauses. "Or with you."

"Hmm," you say, and you lift yourself up on your arms to kiss her, gently, while you think about the woman at Sykes' brothel whom Myka had, however unwittingly, abused.

"It didn't occur to me until much later that she was a slave," she says, caressing your face after you pull back. "Of course it felt hollow. She had no choice about being with me. That's when I swore I would never…" She trails off, looks away, and then back at you, the edge of something frantic in her eyes. "You wanted this, right?" She squeezes you, caresses your naked hip with her fingertips, under the blanket. "Tell me you wanted this."

You smile down at her. You imagine the slave whose body she purchased, the Germanic villages her fiancé undoubtedly slaughtered. You stare at her blind innocence at the center of it all. Your head tips down to her as your hand slides up and rests across her fragile throat, where her pulse beats hard against the heel of your hand. And you kiss her, instead of answering, before she can see the mayhem in your eyes.


	4. Athena and Artemis

The second time you have sex with her, she notices the marks on your abdomen left from your pregnancy.

"You've had a child, Helena?" she asks, wide-eyed, like it's the most remarkable thing.

You close your eyes and trail your fingers over hers where they linger to the side of your navel. "Yes. Four years ago."

She traces the faint, whitish marks with reverence. "Where's your child now?" she asks.

"Gone," you say, before slipping your thumb between her teeth and watching her lips close around it.

\\

Walking alone feels like a victory as great as any battle you've fought.

Leena stands beside you, arms outstretched to catch you if you fall, as you take your first unsupported steps in weeks.

"I knew it!" she exclaims, smiling broadly. "I knew we could get you fixed up. I could tell you were strong enough."

You grin back at her. You can't help it.

\\

When the Roman arrives for her daily visit to find you walking carefully across the floor of your cell, she lets out a whoop of happiness as she drops the game board and pieces to the floor and wraps her arms around you. She lifts you up and spins you around, laughing into the crook of your neck.

"You seem taller than you did before," she says when she sets you back down, settling her arms around your waist.

"Still less an Amazon than you," you retort. Even her aristocracy, her unbearable Roman-ness, will not dampen your relief today. You don't even notice the smile that tugs at your cheeks as her sparkling eyes take hold of yours.

As your strength continues to improve, you venture out of your cell. You help Leena with her chores around the ludus: everything from washing sweaty gladiators' armor and padding to washing plates, sweeping and tidying. You offer to help her cook, once, but after you burn three batches of bread in a row, she suggests that perhaps she should do that on her own.

The more time you spend with her, the more you like her. You come from two places as far apart in the empire as two people can be, but you find common ground surprisingly easily. You are both people who pay attention, as best you can, to the goings-on of the world you live in. You talk politics, and share stories from your pasts. She was brought to Rome in her twelfth year, you learn. But she remembers the stories she grew up with – the legends her parents would tell her, to pass the time – and she shares them with you. You remember far less of the stories you heard from your family, but you share with her the ones that you can, and embellish them with the products of your own imagination.

You have experience telling stories. You had a daughter, after all.

\\

You begin to spot them: the Roman's gazes that linger on your skin as you pull your tunic back on. The coy smiles that she offers you before looking away. The growing urgency and desperation of her kisses; the way she murmurs your name like benediction.

\\

When you can, you creep above the training grounds to watch the Gladiators in practice. They move through rehearsed series of steps, and many of them have remarkable grace and poise for such enormous men. Your eye drifts to one, in particular, on the far side of the group. He's of a slimmer build than many of the others, but his movements have a crisp precision that indicate he's likely among the most deadly.

You rarely come close to them, though. They are considered dangerous, especially to women, so you and Leena enter their space only when they're training in the yard, or when they're in their cells.

Young Claudia visits you when she can. You come to realize that she has a brilliant analytic mind. You ask the Roman if she would be willing to leave the game board with you, in your cell, and you teach the rules to Claudia. She can rarely stay with you long enough to finish the game, but you scratch reminders in the dirt of where the pieces lay so that you can resume the game the next day.

When the Roman visits, you vanish into your cell together and close the door. Sometimes you play a round or two of _Latrunculi_. Sometimes you skip that altogether and fumble your way to the nearest wall or your blankets in the corner.

The whole situation grows more terrifying with each passing day. Because, truly, it's not so bad, this life you're living. You still don't know, really, what you're doing here. But you're quite certain that MacPherson didn't have you beaten and dropped here only to live this life of relative luxury.

The relative comfort is making you soft. You're beginning to smile, sincerely, when Claudia insists on calling you "HG" when she learns it was a nickname you had, back before you were captured.

You're beginning forget that the way you absorb Myka's warmth and her touches is merely a series of moves in a longer game.

You begin to forget that she is a Roman and your Domina, and you shouldn't call her Myka.

You need to know what the Domini's strategy is, so you can make sure that yours is better.

\\

"My parents are desperate for me to become engaged again," Myka offers, as the sweat cools on your skin. She is nestled in the crook of your arm, her thigh wrapped around yours.

"And why haven't you?"

She shrugs. "I haven't liked any of my suitors."

You smile. "Surely you must have half the city beating down your door."

She squeezes your arm affectionately. "Hardly. There's only one, right now."

You refuse to acknowledge the twisting in your chest, when she says that. "Well, what could possibly be wrong with him, if he's got the good taste to come after you?" you offer, instead.

"Oh, he's nice enough," she says. "I've known him my whole life. But he's my father's age. Recently widowed, and just looking for someone to fill the gap. And he owns a brothel staffed with slaves, and you know how I feel about that."

You refuse to acknowledge the spike in your pulse. "What's his name?" you ask, and you swear you don't sound like you're choking.

"MacPherson."

\\

It's perfect, you think. Because you hate him more than any other living person in the world, and he wants Myka. And there's little you'd love more than to keep a person you hate from something he wants.

\\

"Can you ride?" are the first words out of her mouth, one day, when she finds you in your cell. She's grinning at you, wearing the more traditional clothing of a roman noblewoman, today.

You stare at her blankly for a moment, completely taken aback by the unexpected question. "Ride horses? I used to. It's been a long time."

"Good enough," she says, and she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you down the corridor and up the stairs, into the light.

It's the first time you've left the ludus since you arrived. You exit into a busy market street and know almost immediately where you are—just a few streets over from MacPherson's. The road itself is clogged with carts, chariots, pack-mules, and its edges packed with vendors selling everything from vegetables to cloth to household trinkets. For a moment, the noise of it is overwhelming and you have to remind yourself to breathe.

Myka dropped your wrist as soon as you stepped out into the road, and you understand why: for a noble and a servant to seem too familiar would only encourage unwanted attention. She notices your moment of distress, though, and steps close to you, putting hand on your shoulder.

"Are you all right?" she asks, quietly.

"Of course," you say, with what you hope sounds like indignation.

She gives you a crooked smile and squeezes your upper arm before dropping her hand to her side. "Follow me closely."

You do, as she hugs the side of the ludus to dodge most of the traffic, until she crosses a road and turns left behind another large building. You come upon a stable built into the back of a building, and an enclosure with a few horses.

"Wait here," she says, before she goes to speak to a stable-boy. He disappears into the barn, and emerges several minutes later with two saddled horses.

"Do you need help getting up?" he asks, as he hands the reins of the bay to Myka, and the dapple grey to you.

Instead of answering, Myka simply flips the reins over her horse's head and vaults up, sitting sidesaddle, as her long dress requires.

You watch her method, then stand back and attempt to duplicate it. Your first attempt falls flat (literally), but your second attempt lands you, however clumsily, behind the horse's whithers.

"We'll work on that," Myka grins at you, cheekily. Then she thanks the stable boy, who bows politely and runs back into the barn.

Sitting sidesaddle is awkward, but you develop a feel for it as you follow Myka through the city. An hour later, when you have left the city through the north gate and travelled a league up the road, she stops, adjusts her skirts, and swings her leg over so that she sits astride.

"Thank the gods," you say, as you mirror her actions. "This is how I learned."

"I know," she says, "but if my father saw me ride this way, he'd take away my horse."

"That one's yours, then?" you ask.

She nods. "I call her Athena, after the Greek goddess of wisdom."

You smile. "That's a terribly big name for a little horse."

She grins at you cheekily. "Don't tell her that. You'll offend her."

"Have you named mine, as well?" you ask.

"I call her Artemis."

"Goddess of the moon," you say, tracing your hand over her dappled neck.

You travel for two more hours at a quick pace. When Myka finally slows, you're passing through a thick wood. The road bends left but she stays to its right side, and when she passes a large tree with a missing limb she veers off altogether.

"Stay close," she says, "the path is faint and easy to lose."

You look down, and sure enough, you can see where the roots and foliage have been slightly beaten to dirt. You follow her, ducking and dodging branches and tree limbs, for what feels like an endless amount of time until you emerge in a small clearing. There's a creek moving through it, and on the far side you notice a shelter, low to the ground, with a fire pit. The frame, you can see, has been there for some time, but the cloth stretched over it is new.

When you reach the center of the clearing, you pause and circle your horse around. You can't make out where the trail entered the clearing, and you feel suddenly, blissfully alone.

You follow Myka to the shelter, where you dismount and hitch your horses to a low-hanging branch.

She walks to the shelter and runs her fingers along its top beam. "Sam built this when he was a boy," she says. "He built it with two of his friends, but they stopped coming out here before they were men. But he kept it up. This is where he brought me to talk about marriage. I still come here, sometimes, when I want to be alone."

Your arms are wrapped across your stomach and you feel, suddenly, like an intruder. Which reminds you, of course, that you are. You seduced this Roman for your own ends, and you still have every intention of becoming her undoing.

But then she looks up at you, her eyes curling up at the edges, and says, "I was the only person alive who knew this place was here. Now there are two of us." She steps close to you, slips her arms around your waist, and kisses you, softly.

She sends you into the woods to find tinder and dry branches, and when you come back you find her sitting near the fire pit, skinning a rabbit.

"I came by yesterday to fix the cloth on the shelter," she says. "I set a few snares while I was here."

Sam taught her to do that, as well.

She keeps a firestarter in a metal box in the shelter. It doesn't take long for you to have a roaring fire burning, and you're eating a lunch of roasted rabbit meat with your fingers. You offer her a piece from your hand and she takes your fingers into her mouth with it, licking them for longer than she needs to, in a way that sends warmth to your groin.

After your meal, you clean your hands in the stream. When you sit back down by the fire, she positions herself behind you, encouraging you to lean back against her tall frame. Her fingers find purchase under your chin and she tips your head back so that she can kiss your lips, softly at first, then deeper, harder, claiming, but in a way that begs you to claim her back, to curve your hand around her neck and _pull_, so you do. Breathlessly, she pulls away and urges you to lean forward. Her fingers hook under the hem of your tunic and trail themselves up your thighs, over your hips, and along your torso. You shift a little to free the fabric from under your body, and she guides it gently over your head. With gentle pressure she angles your torso forward and then you feel her lips, her nose, tracing over the soft, pink scars on your back, her breath caressing them like a healing balm.

Then you're leaning back against her, again, her lips toying with yours, her fingers tracing idle patterns over your abdomen. She untangles you from your undergarments. Her soft hand cups your breast as the callused one trails down your front until your legs fall open, into the cradle of hers. Then she's everywhere, around you, inside you, her body warming your back as the fire heats your front. You move helplessly, endlessly into her touch, panting into the soft side of her neck, heels of your sandals digging into the dirt, fingers gripping her knees like you might levitate if you let go.

"By all the gods," she murmurs into your ear, her voice clipped, breathless. And then she shifts, adds another finger that curls inside you with the first two, and you swear your spirit bursts free from your body, following the campfire smoke into the distant blue sky.

\\

Hours later, when the sky glows pink with sunset and you're sitting sidesaddle again, following her back through the city gates, you allow yourself to acknowledge what you're feeling. You _know_ that what you're feeling, in this moment, is dangerous. It's dangerous to you, to her, to the dark plan you have for both of you. You remember that MacPherson is courting her, and what that should mean for you, for your intentions.

But as your eye watches the way the folds of her dress follow the slope of her shoulder, the way her hair reflects the red in the sunset-the feeling is so beautiful, you can't bring yourself to care.


	5. Ways To Keep You Near Me

The taste of salt on her skin tells you whether her visit on any given day falls before or after her training session.

"Could I come and watch?" you ask, one day, as she's belting her gladius back to her hip.

She smiles brilliantly at you. "Of course."

You follow her through the corridors of the ludus and turn the corner into the armory. For the first time, you're in the presence of gladiators – a room full of them, stripping off their armor after their day's training, and dropping their sweaty padding into the large basket that Leena will pick up later to wash.

You keep an appropriate, subservient step behind Myka, who receives a string of muttered "Good afternoon, Domina"s from the men as she passes them.

One of them—a behemoth of a man, with dark hair and fair skin—stumbles as he unbuckles one of his leg guards, and falls into you. You catch him, more out of instinct than anything else, and steady him as he rights himself. As he turns his head to thank you, a crooked leer spreads across his face.

"You're new around here, aren't you, pretty thing," he says, trailing a finger up your shoulder. Without thinking you grab his hand, bend it downward at the wrist and shove him back by the leverage of his thumb.

"Do not. Touch me," you growl, with all the menace you can muster.

"Marcus!" Myka shouts. She had gotten a few steps ahead of you but now she grabs you by the arm and shoves you behind her, protectively. "My father will not take kindly to your untoward advances upon his slaves."

"Treat the ladies with respect, Diamond." This voice, which speaks perfect, unaccented Latin, comes from another man who stands by the doorway between the armory and the corridor which, you assume, leads to the training yard. Your aggressor reluctantly steps back.

You follow Myka to the doorway. She smiles at the man standing there.

"Time for today's session, then?" he asks her, smiling.

"If it's a good time for you," she says. With a nod of her head, she invites you to stand beside her. "This is Helena. She's new here, and wanted to watch the training."

You smile and duck your head. "If that's not a problem for you or for Lady Myka, of course."

"If it doesn't bother you, Domina, it doesn't bother me," he says, offering you a large, square hand to shake. "I'm Pete."

You follow Pete and Myka down the corridor.

"Do you know anything about weapons use?" Pete asks you.

"A little," you reply. "I was good with a bow, a long time ago."

"Helena!" Myka exclaims, grinning broadly, "You never told me that."

"You knew I was a soldier before I was captured, Lady Myka."

"We have some bows if you'd like to try your hand again," Pete offers, "If our Domina permits, of course."

Myka groans a little. "Pete, Helena. Neither of you use titles with me. My name is fine."

Pete grins, and leans toward you conspiratorially. "Romans losing their sense of decorum," he stage-whispers, "It'll be the end of the empire!" His energy is endlessly jovial, and you can't help but smile back at him.

Myka smirks and shakes her head. "I'd love to see you shoot a bow, Helena."

The bow fingers of your right hand tingle. You imagine the pleasant pinch of the bowstring, the snap of release, the wet thud of the arrow hitting its target. But what you say is, "Thank you, but I think my days of shooting arrows are behind me."

\\

Myka's grace with a sword is remarkable to behold. She keeps her weight forward, calves flexed, like a wild cat ready to pounce. The sword operates as an extension of her arm, of her body, as she parries Pete's offenses to duck under them and launch an attack of her own.

"Good!" Pete exclaims, "But you're still dropping your guard on your left side when you make that turn. Get lower, bend your knees more, and angle your shield like—yes, like that. Good!"

The sword is too big for her, but she handles it deftly as a lover, or a well-strung kite, and she moves like a leaf on the wind. Captivating.

\\

You watch her almost every day, after that, eyes drawn to the firm flex of her bicep, to the precise flutter and drift of her feet over the sand.

With every passing day, you wonder how much longer you have before this, like everything else, is taken from you.

\\

She is picking up the pieces of your just-finished game of _Latrunculi_ when she says, "I've been thinking… maybe I should marry MacPherson."

Your eyes flit up from where they've been watching your fingers gather the pieces from your side of the board.

She glances up at you through her lashes, and then looks back down at the pieces on the floor. "I thought maybe—maybe I could marry him and bring you with me. You could work in the house and be out of this—this cell. And I could keep you close to me that way." She tightens the string on the sack of pieces. "That's what I want, really. To be able to keep you close."

Silence sits for a few moments. You both breathe through it.

"If you marry him," you murmur, "I will ask you not to bring me with you."

Her eyes widen and immediately begin to glisten as her fingers dart forward to cup your jaw. "Why not, Helena?"

_Because he would kill me on sight,_ you think. But you don't say that, because she has no idea that you know who he is, or that he knows you.

"He owns a brothel," you say, as if that were explanation enough.

She blinks at you, her fingers pushing your hair back behind your ear. "You've been in a brothel, haven't you."

It isn't a question. Not really.

When you nod, she winces and looks away, her chin pressing against her own shoulder. Her grip tightens on the side of your face. It echoes you of the way you used to hug your daughter after a visit from a particularly unpleasant client, because she was so beautiful and perfect surrounded by so much ugliness.

Myka's wet eyes turn to find yours. "You know I despise what he does."

You do. And she does. Just the previous week, she had come swirling into your space, ranting about her father's friends and their stories of visiting slave brothels, wondering in her rage why they wouldn't choose instead to visit the many free women who sold the same services voluntarily.

She continues: "MacPherson, I know he… partakes… of the services of his own business. And I despise that, too. But you would be upstairs, in the house. And we could… we could be…"

You look down. "Maybe we could," you say, "but if you married him, and I went with you to his house, I would belong to him, not to you. If I spilled a glass of wine on a day when he felt short-tempered, he could send me downstairs on a whim. Surely you know that." (You know it. You saw it happen more than once.)

Her eyes fall closed. "Yes," she says. "Yes, I know. I just… I keep trying to think of ways to keep you near me."

You lean toward her. "Come be near me now," you say, as you pull her body to yours.

She smiles softly into your kiss, but stills your hands when they reach for the knots of her clothing. Her lips part from yours and she rests her forehead against your hairline.

"Could I just hold you for a little while?" she asks, quietly.

"Of course," you say.

She lays back on the blanket and pulls you gently with her, warming you between her arm and her side.

\\

You won't get to keep her. Each passing day brings you closer to the day when she'll have to leave you. And the day when you will eventually have to confront your destiny—the reality of why you were left in this ludus—comes closer, too.

You can't live, anymore, with the not-knowing.

When Myka arrives one day, she leans in to kiss you the moment you duck into your cell together, but you turn your head away.

"Domina—"

"Helena, how many times do I have to ask you not to call—"

"No," you cut in. She looks at you, surprised. She is enlightened enough to circumvent titles, apparently, but she's still slightly scandalized when a slave interrupts a noble. "I'm sorry. I need to ask you something."

Your eyes are cast down and to the side, and she brings her hands to cup your cheeks. "Of course. Anything. Helena, what's wrong?"

"I need to know why I'm here," you say.

She cocks her head at you. "Isn't your purpose here to do what you're doing? To help Leena with the chores around the ludus?"

"I… surely not."

"Why do you say that?"

You tighten your lips. For a moment, the whole story wants to spill out into the warm space created by her soft face and her gentle hands. You could tell her, truthfully, that you were whipped and dropped here as penalty for having killed a Roman, and you're pretty sure that your current lifestyle doesn't qualify as punishment. It would be such relief, to share that burden.

But MacPherson is beating down her father's door for her hand. Sharing your story would be a dangerous idea for both of you.

"I just… I'm almost certain there's more to it," you say, instead.

Her thumbs press soft circles over the points of your cheekbones.

"Okay," she says. "I'll talk to my father and see what I can find out."

\\

Later that evening, during the hour before dark when you are usually alone, her footsteps come bolting down the corridor. She appears in your cell with a torch in one hand and her skirts gathered in the other.

"Helena," she says, her eyes wide and panicked. She drops to her knees in front of you as you sit up from where you had just laid down to sleep. "Helena, what did you _do_?"

"Your father didn't tell you?" you ask. Surely he must know.

"No," Myka says, reaching one hand up to cup your shoulder, your neck, your jaw. "He told me that—" she shakes her head and glances down, then back up again—"that some stories are too tawdry for the ears of dignified women."

"Myka," you murmur, voice shaking, even as your head tilts itself into her palm, "what's to become of me?"

"He almost refused to tell me." Even in the dim light, you can see her eyes shining with tears. "He said—he said you were given to him for free, from a friend, on the condition that you be given to his gladiators once you were healed."

"Given to the gladiators. In the arena?" That might not be so terrible. You can fight, after all, and force them to kill you quickly. Maybe take a few of them with you.

Myka swallows audibly. "No. By small blessing, it seems that you've been… sentenced… to live, however miserably."

Ah. Back to your old profession, then, but for even less money and without the protection of guards or a space to escape to rest.

Your heart doesn't stop. Neither does your breath. None of the reactions that would indicate surprise or fear strike you. This isn't the first time you've heard of this as punishment for female criminals of low status, so when you wound up in a ludus—well, the pieces fit.

Your knees tuck themselves up against your chest and you wrap your arms around them. "All right," you say. There are parts of you, switches and wheels deep in your chest, that had gone dormant, shortly before all this began, before the beating that landed you here. You had allowed them to awaken again, in Myka's company, until now, until this very moment, as your mind instinctively finds them and tamps them down, shutting them all off.

"When?" you ask. "Did he say?"

She moves to sit beside you, so that your bodies are touching from hip to shoulder. "He said that Artie, the facility manager, was to tell him when you were healed, and he would issue the order."

You let out a huff. "I never see Artie."

"I expect he's getting his information from Leena. And I would guess that Leena is withholding how well you're doing."

"Leena knows about my sentence?" you ask. Does everyone know, but you?

"I doubt it," the Roman says, "But she's supernaturally intuitive. She knows the condition you were in when you arrived here, and she knows my father is not a merciful man by nature. She had to know you were here for a reason."

You sit in silence for a long moment. The Roman shifts and places her hand on your lower back. "Helena, I wish you'd tell me what happened. I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you safe, but it would help if I knew."

"I'm sorry, Domina," you say. "Some stories are too tawdry for the ears of dignified women."

She stiffens against you. A moment later she forcibly relaxes, her arm tightening around your shoulders. "Okay," she says. "Would you like me to stay with you? I can sneak back to the house before dawn."

"No, thank you, Domina. I think I'd like to be alone for awhile."

She runs her hand twice along the length of your spine, then leans in and kisses your temple. "Okay."

\\

You had almost forgotten your self-appointed mission for the beautiful Lady Myka.

The urge to destroy, so nearly quelled, flares up in you tenfold.

\\

The next day, you go to watch her training, as has become your ritual. Myka and Pete smile fully at one another, trading verbal barbs in equal pace with blows.

You wander to the rack of weapons at the edge of the yard. The spears on one end catch your eye, but when you pick one up, it feels over-long and top-heavy, its weight and balance are quite different from the ones you used to carry

Alongside the spears rest a stack of tridents. You pick one up and measure its heft, balancing it carefully over your hands.

Yes, you think, this fits you better. This trident will do perfectly.

* * *

**a/n: I know that gladiators didn't have access to real weapons in training spaces, but hey. Storytelling over realism. I do not, however, know a thing about swordfighting so I apologize if I framed that part badly.**

**Hoping people aren't getting too peeved with me for withholding info about what Helena did to land herself in all this trouble. My plan has always been for the backstory to be revealed to the readers and to Myka at the same time, but I didn't initially plan for this thing to turn out quite this long, so now it feels a bit like I'm keeping secrets. But, hey, too late to turn back now. All will be revealed in time. :) **


	6. Without a Net

**a/n: I've gotten some reviews/PMs from people worried that I wouldn't finish this story because it has a relatively low number of follows/favs/reviews. I'm flattered by the concern, but don't worry: this thing is a labor of love. It's occupying way too much space in my brain. I *have* to finish it, or it will never leave me alone.**

**(which is not to say I don't appreciate the favs/follows/reviews, because I totally do. I got several after the last chapter-thanks! :))**

* * *

Pete and Myka stop sparring when they notice you approaching them, trident in hand.

"Usually we use those with a net," Pete says. "Grab one and I'll show you how it works."

You force your lips to curve up toward your ears, and direct your attention toward Myka.

"You know," you say, "my father used to say that a sword wasn't the best weapon for women or small men."

Myka smiles at you, eyes sparkling, and cocks her head to the side. "How's that?"

You open your right hand toward Pete, the trident dangling in your left. Pete glances nervously at Myka, who nods at him, without breaking eye contact with you. He lays his gladius in your palm. It's warm, the leather-wrapped handle slightly sticky with his sweat, and it's a little heavy for you to handle.

Still, you raise it toward Myka, dropping into an offensive stance. She crosses blades with you, smiling.

You step into a series of slow, practiced, offensive steps that you remember from your youth. Myka plays along, blocking each one easily.

"When you're evenly matched with your opponent in terms of strength and size, it's a fine weapon for people of any size," you say, just loud enough to be heard over the soft clinks of metal against metal. Pete steps back, away from the moving blades.

"But when you find yourselves braced hilt-to-hilt—" you pause your sword's movement in midair, and Myka pauses hers against it. Following your narrative, she slides her blade down yours until the hilts are locked against one another. "—yes, when they're braced like this," you continue, "the larger, stronger person has the distinct advantage. So if we both press as hard as we can—" and you push against her. She pushes back. She is both larger, and stronger, and you have no choice but to step back, under the pressure, so the point of her sword finds itself at your chest. "See?" you say.

"But you could duck under," she says. She raises her sword again and you brace your hilts against one another. "Step away from the pressure, and my strength and size will topple me over."

Your eyebrows raise. "Perhaps," you say, "but if you grab me by the arm or the neck before I move, then I won't have that option."

Myka steps back, then, lips quirked in a small smile. She's regarding you distantly, like you're something foreign. Perhaps you are.

"So I guess you think the trident is a better option, then?" She gestures vaguely to the weapon dangling in your left hand.

Pete is standing a few paces removed, observing your interaction with thinly-veiled wariness. You offer him his gladius and he takes it, but you notice he keeps it in his hand, rather than sheathing it at his belt.

"Well," you say, "I learned with a spear, but this is closer to the right size than those Roman spears over there." You lift the trident into an offensive position, and she lifts her sword in response.

Pete takes two steps forward. "Myka, I really don't think—"

"It's fine, Pete," Myka says, smiling. The sparkle in her eyes dances between playfulness and tension. She can tell that you're not the same person you were yesterday, but she's willing (or compelled) to see where you're going, what your next move will be. Where on the board you'll place your Eagle.

You continue your narration. "The advantage of a long-staff weapon, like this, is the leverage." With a flick of your wrist, you bring the end of the trident down on the end of her sword and her quick reflexes keep her from dropping it; she pivots away, around the striking point of your weapon, and stands prepared to face another offense.

"The length amplifies the force of my strike, which makes your greater physical strength less of an advantage. It also keeps me out of range of your sword." You launch into a series of quick, spinning, offensive blows that drive to step back, back, back, until finally you catch her blade between the prongs of your trident and, with a quick turn of the wrists, wrench it free from her grip and send it flying into the sand several feet off to the side.

You pick the trident up and plant its base next to your foot, prongs pointing into the air. "See?" you ask, with a smile, cocking your head at her.

"I do," she says. She runs her teeth over her lower lip, thoughtfully, and then goes to retrieve her gladius.

"Again?" she asks, stepping into position.

You smile, letting the tension of battle ripple through your muscles as you find the balance of your weapon. "Again," you say.

This time, she manages to disarm you. She grins, hands you your weapon, and drops into position again.

You spar for a few minutes longer, this time—long enough to feel the gaps in her defense and the limits of her strikes—before you let her disarm you . You let her knock you into the sand, for good measure, your trident on the ground beside you. She extends a hand and pulls you back onto your feet.

"Once more?" she asks, as you dust yourself off.

"Once more," you say. You find the balance of your trident and breathe deeply, once, twice, three times. Then you're attacking. Your first combination of movements drives her backward and drives Pete in the opposite direction, away from the flying extremity of your staff. Your second combination disarms her of her gladius; it flies into the wall of the yard with a loud _clang_.

You flow seamlessly into a final combination that sweeps her feet out from under her and sends her falling backward into the sand.

And then you're standing over her, breathing hard, one foot on her shield alongside her forearm, and the other firmly on her sternum. The centre point of your trident grazes the pale underside of her graceful, aquiline throat.

Her gasping breaths heave against the underside of your foot. "Okay," she says, smiling tentatively up at you. "Point taken."

She begins to shift as though she plans to stand up, but you shift your weight and press her chest back down under your foot. You hear Pete jogging toward you and you raise a hand in his direction—"Stop where you are, Pete"—without lifting your gaze from Myka's eyes.

The smile falls from Myka's face. "Helena?" she asks, softly.

"Don't bloody call me that, _Domina_," you snarl at her.

"I—I don't—"

"Call me _slave_. Call me _whore_. Call me a savage, ruthless Celt from the far edge of Gaul."

"Helena," Myka says, pleading this time.

"They're what I am, aren't they?" you snarl. "I'm not _Helena_ to anyone in Rome."

You hear movement to your right, and Myka glances in that direction. You press the point of the trident a little harder against her throat and watch her eyes flash back to you, wider. "Stay where you are, Pete," you growl. "I'd hate to have to do something you regret."

"What in the name of the gods are you _doing_?" Pete yells, on the edge of your awareness. Your attention drives into to the green eyes shining below you.

"What are you doing, Hel—" she swallows when you press harder on her chest. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing, Roman?"

"I know what it looks like." She shifts a little, looking for a way to evade the proximity of your weapon, but finding none. "But it _feels_ like you don't really want to do this."

"Does it, now? Enlighten me, _Domina_, as to what makes you feel that."

"This isn't _you."_

A bark of harsh laughter escapes your chest. "Isn't it? Try again."

'It isn't. I know you better than you think I do, _Helena_." She says your name forcefully. You cock an eyebrow at her, and she swallows hard. "I know you've suffered more than I will ever be able to understand. But I know you've got an unbelievable capacity for tenderness."

"You shouldn't mistake the attention of a prostitute for affection, _Domina._ With my years of practice, I could convince a three-legged dog to fall passionately in love with me."

That strikes something in her. Her eyes flash fire for a fraction of an instant, and then they darken.

You can feel Pete's gaze move back and forth between the two of you. "Wait, _what_?" he exclaims.

"Not now, Pete," Myka says. She swallows hard against your weapon, and runs her tongue over her teeth. "Okay," she says to you, "if that's how you want to do this, then fine. Because guess what: if you think all your illusions have gone unnoticed, then you've underestimated me."

"Really."

"Yes." The traces of fear and gentleness have vanished from her face and voice. "I know you're far, far smarter than you try to show. You might be the most intelligent person I've ever met, but you've had to suppress it because your words would have no currency in Rome. I don't know how you lost your child, but I know that you remain deeply wounded by it. I see the way your fingers touch those marks on your stomach."

"Oh, gods," Pete groans. "I wish you'd told me you were getting it on with her, Myka, so I could have told you it was a _really bad idea._"

Myka continues undaunted: "I know that you've let me win almost every game of _Latrunculi_ we've ever played. I've always suspected it was because you were afraid of what might happen if you let your intelligence show by beating me."

You tilt your head to the side. "Ah, you see, Myka, that's not it at all. I may have lost those games on purpose, but I never let you win a thing. I lost those games to make you feel safe with me, comfortable, triumphant, all on the way to this very moment, where the victory is so clearly mine."

"What victory is this?!"

"That I'm giving you what this godforsaken life has given me: the feeling of giving your heart so fully to a person only to have it ripped violently from you. I'm giving you the ultimate betrayal. And I'll be imprisoned and then executed, and that's what I'm giving myself: a departure from this life, and the freedom to join my loved ones in the one that comes after."

She blinks at you. Her free hand comes to rest against the bare skin of your ankle, on your chest. "I loved you, Helena," she breathes. "Gods. I love you. And you love me."

Her eyes remind you of the way they looked when she glanced back at you over her shoulder before she led you back into the city, that day you went to Sam's camp. "Wouldn't you like to believe that?" you smirk. You try to tell yourself that none of the venom is gone.

"No, Helena. I am not so naïve as you think. You forget that I know what it feels like to share love with a person, and I most certainly know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a person's attempts at faking love because they want something from me." Her hand is moving against your skin, caressing from your heel, over your anklebone, to the bottom swell of your calf. "You fell in love with me, Helena. You may not have meant for it to happen, but it did."

"Myka," you say.

Her hand abruptly leaves your leg and grips the center prong of your trident. "If I'm wrong, then stop talking and just kill me." She aligns the point with the softest part of her throat and steadies it there. "If I'm wrong, then stop tormenting me. Look me in the eye and kill me, if that's your goal. Kill me knowing that your plan worked, that you convinced me to love you, and that you convinced me that you felt the same." She pulls the trident more firmly against her throat; you see the skin bow under its pressure. "Do it," she growls. "Do it. Just kill me."

Her eyes are wide and hard, staring up at you. You're struck, not for the first time, by the beauty of their particular shade of green, like the fir trees from where you grew up. The tenderness that usually fills them when she looks at you is gone. In their place is anger, and only the slightest trace of fear.

That's when you realize you've killed her already. Without shedding a drop of her blood, you've destroyed the beautiful, hopeful, gentle creature that is Myka Bering.

You accept what you already knew: that she's right.

Your heart broke when you lost your daughter and the pieces of it break, here, again, over top of the angry shell of this woman you love. A sob wrenches itself from your chest as you stumble back, dropping the trident into the sand beside her. You manage to trip a few steps away and fall to your knees before Pete's on top of you, pressing your chest into the ground and pinning your arms behind your back.

"Myka," he shouts, frantically. "Are you okay?"

Your face is oriented toward her, your cheek pressed into the sand. She's sitting up, now, elbows resting on bent knees, one hand rubbing at her throat and the other gripping into the disheveled knot of her hair.

She turns and looks at him, and then at you. Her eyes are red and she's making no effort to staunch the tears tracking through the dirt on her cheeks.

Her gaze locks with yours, and she sniffs. "I'll be fine, Pete," she says. "I'll be fine."

* * *

**a/n: Too close to the canon storyline? I have always felt like that moment in the show-where Myka challenged Helena to acknowledge that she loved her too much to destroy her-was basically the moment where Bering/Wells became canon (screw you Jack Kenny). So I felt like I needed an equivalent scene in my universe, but where I get to make all that subtext my maintext. ;)  
**


	7. MacPherson

You have never been locked into the cell where you sleep, but when Pete closes the door, he latches it from the outside. He doesn't leave you with a torch, so you're left almost fully in shadow, the only light trickling in from the corridor through the small window in your door.

You feel your way to the corner where you sleep and sit on your blanket. The rough weave catches under your fingernails. Your fingertips have traced the inverse of that weave imprinted in pale skin, flushed pink across prominent shoulder blades.

Moments march past you like soldiers into battle while you sit in the darkness. Periodically, footsteps travel up or down the corridor outside your cell. Their sound is the only thing that punctures your stupor. Images of Myka's soft throat cycle through your mind: how it feels against your lips. How it looks under your blade. How it tastes under your tongue. How it looks under your blade.

The air feels full of sand as you breathe it in, an increasingly heavy weight settling deep in your chest.

You don't know how much time passes before the door rattles a little as the lock is lifted, and then your space is flooded with light from the corridor. You raise your hands to shield your eyes from the glare, and see Claudia standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

"It's not that bright," Claudia says.

"Yes, well, I've been in the dark for some time."

"Yeah, shouldn't you have a torch in here?" Claudia asks, shaking her head. She takes a step toward you before you can answer and extends a hand for you to grasp. "Come on."

You grasp her wrist as she grasps yours, and she pulls you to your feet.

"Where are we going?" You smooth your hands over the front of your tunic, brushing some of the dust and sand away.

Claudia shrugs, then cocks her head to one side. "There's work to be done, and Leena's not used to doing it on her own anymore. You've got chores, H.G."

She turns and walks out into the corridor, and you fall into step behind her. Your head spins with a thousand questions, tangled in indecipherable knots. One finally wrestles itself free: "Why didn't Leena come and get me herself?" you ask.

Claudia's mouth tightens a little. "Domina asked me to do it."

"Leena's too busy, perhaps?" you say, even though it's not a logical explanation—if Leena were to busy to fetch you, she would also be too busy to have the message relayed through Myka or Claudia.

Claudia's shoulders sag a little. She stops walking and turns to face you. "Look, H.G.," she says, "Not to brag or anything, but I'm a lot smarter than anyone around here gives me credit for. I've noticed what's been going on between Myka and you. She's been, you know, _happier_ these past few weeks than I've ever seen her, and I've been her hand-servant for three years. Given the timing, it wasn't hard for me to put two and two together and figure out that her happiness had something to do with you."

Your eyes drop to the floor, somewhere to the left of your feet.

"So when she got all weird today, I figured it had to do with you. Then when she told me to come and let you out instead of doing it herself—well, I _knew_. Am I wrong?"

Your arms fold across your stomach as though they can keep the pieces of you from flying apart. You shake your head, _no._

Claudia nods once, decisively. "Okay. So, she told me to bring you to Leena, so I'm bringing you to Leena." She shrugs, then turns and resumes her walk down the corridor.

You take a deep breath to follow her, but "Claudia" comes out of your lips instead. She stops, turns back to face you. Your fingertips fit into the dips between your ribs, tucked under your arms.

She cocks an eyebrow at you, expectantly.

Your mouth opens and closes a few times, seeking words. "How is she?" you finally ask. "Is she all right?"

Claudia shakes her head and looks down, one hand rubbing over the back of her neck. "I don't know. Maybe? Not really? She came back from training yesterday dirtier than I've ever seen her, and then asked me to leave her alone in her room for awhile. When I went back to check on her later, she hadn't really moved. Then she went to the bath but she asked me not to come with her. And, I mean, helping with the whole bathing thing is part of my job, so… " The girl shrugs and crosses her arms over her chest, her posture mimicking yours.

A small, sad smile quirks one corner of your mouth. "You care about her, don't you."

Her eyes flash up to yours, hard and burning. "Don't you? And why shouldn't I?"

"She's a Roman, and you're from Gaul. She's a master, and you're a slave. She does what she wants, and you do what she orders." Answering her second question is the easiest way to evade the first.

The girl's eyes fall closed for a long moment. When they snap open again, she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you down the corridor and into the darkness of an unoccupied cell. She turns to face you and her eyes meet yours through the shadow, without hesitation. They are old and wise as an owl's, despite her young face.

When she speaks, it's in the tongue of her homeland: "_You can understand me if I speak my own language, yes?_" she asks. You raise your eyebrows. Slaves rarely speak to one another in their own language—it raises suspicion among the Romans. You have always spoken with Claudia in Latin.

"_As well as you can understand mine,"_ you reply. Your languages are cousins, though far from the same. You have heard variants of her language from different slaves since you've been in Rome, though, and you suspect that she has heard variants of yours.

She nods. "_I was born free, you know. Like you." _

You nod.

"_I was twelve years old when the Romans attacked my town. They killed my father and captured my mother and me. We were sold to a slave trader and then purchased together to work as seamstresses, making clothing. It was dark and vile and we slept on the floor in the same space where we worked."_

You think of the darkness of your own cell, that you just left.

"_My mother took ill," _she continues, _"But no doctor was sent for her. She died while I was working and I—I still don't know what they did with her body." _

You search her eyes for signs of anger, but all you can tell is that she might be blinking a little more than usual. Maybe.

"_I was devastated. I was lonely and terrified and I got so lost in my grief that working became almost impossible. I'd mess up my stitches almost every day. The Dominus would punish me with a strap to the palms and that made it even harder to work because my hands hurt so much." _She rubs her hands together, in front of her, absently.

"_He finally gave up and sold me. The Dominus bought me to work in the kitchen. I had never done it before. My first day, I tripped and spilled a pot of stew in the dining area. The Domina—not Lady Myka, but her mother—was furious. She yelled at me, threatened to sell me into a far worse place if I couldn't do the job properly. Then the head cook yelled at me, too, for all the work she'd have to start over._

"_I just—I completely broke down that night. I snuck out of the kitchen into the dining room and cried for everything—for my mother, myself, the home I still missed. I thought everyone was asleep but she heard me. And then I thought she'd yell at me for waking her, but she didn't. She brought me into her room and gave me a rag for my nose and asked me why I was crying. And she probably just wanted me to say something simple, like '_I miss my mother,'_ or whatever, but somehow I ended up telling her the whole story. And she just listened. She listened to the whole thing, and she looked me straight in the eye while I talked." _

You can picture this: Myka's focused gaze, her green eyes turning down a little at the outer edges, palms resting on her knees.

"_When I was finished, she told me she was sorry about my mother. It was the first time anyone said that to me, and I could tell that—that she meant it. And then she said it sounded like I could use a friend, which was lucky because she could use one, too, and it was time she had her own hand-maiden, instead of sharing with her mother. So I became her hand-maiden. And she's done right by me, as best she could. When I became sad, those first few months, she was patient and sometimes she would even hold me and let me cry. I have a pillow and blankets for sleeping, and she—she even tried to get me a bed but her father forbade it. When I'm sick, I don't work, and she brings me a doctor when I need it. She tells me about her life and asks me about mine. She taught me to read and write the Roman language. She even—when she found out I don't know my birthday, we picked a day together. Every year she gives me a gift and some coin and the day off."_

You pinch the bridge of your nose with your fingers, and tell yourself the pressure you feel there isn't real, is nothing. _"That's all very nice,"_ you say, _"But she's still the Domina, and you're still the slave. She makes the orders and you follow them."_

Claudia looks down, shakes her head, and looks back up at you. "_I know that. I never forget it. But that's the world we live in, isn't it? Here's the thing: I really think she hates slavery. I really do. I had heard that there were some Romans like that, before, but—just a the other week, she came to her room all angry and said she wished we lived in a world where people weren't treated as chattel, neither women from fathers to husbands, nor slaves from master to master. She grabbed me by the hand and said, 'I hope you know I would free you in a second if I could.' And then she said—and this is what really gets me—she said, 'And I hope we could still be friends.'" _

"_You couldn't, though," _you say. _"Even if you were manumitted, you could never be friends with an aristocrat like her."_

"_She's an aristocrat," _Claudia says, indignantly. "_She can be friends with whoever she wants. She's my friend now."_

"_I wish I had your good faith," _you murmur, toward the ground.

"_I don't know why you don't," _she replies, almost angrily, reaching out to grab your wrists. "_Do you remember when we treated your back with _acetum_?"_

Images flash through your mind of Myka's warm fingers stroking your forearm before pinning your wrists to the ground while the burning, stinging, acrid substance was applied to your wounds.

"_Yes," _you say, _"Somewhat." _

"_That was the same day you spat in her face. Do you remember that?"_

Your eyes close involuntarily. You do. Surprisingly vividly, given your state at the time. _"I think so," _you say.

"_You spat in her face and she still insisted on helping us to treat you with the acetum. She wouldn't let us find someone else to do it. You were kicking and fighting us every step of the way, screaming from the pain, and she stayed." _Claudia shakes her head again. "_As far as I can tell, she's never treated you like a slave." _

She's right, when you think about it. And you realize you've never thought about it before. The only times she has ever referred to your status have been when she has been trying to protect you—from her father's punishment, from life in a cell in the ludus, or from her, when she feared she may have been abusing her power over you.

Just when you thought you couldn't feel any worse, the pit of your stomach drops out from inside you and you think you might be sick.

Claudia's eyes widen. She reaches out and grabs your arms, "Hey. _Hey_," she says, in Latin, again. "It's okay. Look. I don't know what happened, but I'm sure she'll get over it and things will… they'll be fine."

Your damp eyes meet hers. "I doubt it, Claudia. I thank you for your kind words, but—some mistakes shouldn't be forgiven."

\\

Day after day, you expect Artie, or Pete, or the Dominus, to find you where you're working, grab you by the arm, and shove you unceremoniously into the Gladiators' quarters without even a _good luck_.

It never happens, though. In truth, your day-to-day activities remain much unchanged from… before. You clean, you launder, you mend gladiators' pads and armor. There is plenty of work to keep both you and Leena busy, and you can't imagine how she ever did it on her own, before.

"The gladiators dealt with dirty pads a lot more often," she says, smiling, when you ask her. She never asks you why she sees more of you now than she used to, or why the Domina never seems to come around anymore. Sometimes, though, you catch her eyes boring into you, like she can see the core of you, pulsing under your skin. Her eyes, in those moments, are touched with sadness, and something that might be pity if you chose to acknowledge it as such.

The _Latrunculi_ board and pieces still live in the corner of your cell. Claudia still visits you, regularly, and sometimes you play. Your hands tend to tremble as you move the pieces, but if she notices, she is kind enough not to say anything.

You do see Myka, occasionally, but only from afar. She still trains with Pete almost every day. A few days after the incident, you sneak away from your laundry, down the corridor to the yard, and stand in the shadows to watch. Her fluttering, agile movements have given way to aggressive, forceful ones. Her blade meets Pete's with a loud, crashing noise every time, her battering offenses driving him backward from their rage more than their finesse. The clumsiness of Pete's movements, compared to how you've seen him before, leads you to believe that he's retreating purposefully, giving her this victory, this feeling of strength.

When they reach the far end of the yard and pivot back, Pete catches sight of you, in your hiding place. He leaps back, quickly, out of range of Myka's blade, and raises a hand to signal her to stop. Then turns and points his blade toward your hiding place. "_You_," he says, with acridity that could sever your head from your body.

Myka turns, then, and spots you there. Your eyes meet for a fraction of an instant before she looks away and you retreat, helplessly, back down the corridor.

You avoid the armory and the yard when you know she's training, after that.

\\

You begin to wonder if the Dominus has forgotten about you, about your existence and your fate. He rarely comes into the ludus himself, preferring, instead, to trust Artie with the oversight of the facility.

You have seen him and heard his voice once or twice, but as far as you know, he has never seen you. Whenever you hear him in the ludus, you do your best to duck into a cell or to hide in the kitchen, where you know he won't see you.

This time, though, when you hear his voice, you are in the armory and he is approaching from the corridor that leads into the ludus.

"Our Myka does love to spend time down here, training in—what is it, my love? Swords?— with Pete, one of our trainers. But she'll give that up after the wedding, won't you."

"If that's what my husband wishes." Her voice, demurely uttering words that make your gut clench and your throat close for so many reasons you can't begin to parse them.

"Well, it's hardly the most ladylike of pastimes, but—"

Oh, gods.

It's the voice. It's _his _voice. The voice you hate most in the world.

He's still talking, but you're not listening anymore to anything but the approaching sound of footsteps. The only ways out of the armory are into the ludus or into the yard, and you're sure they must be planning to walk through the armory into the yard, where the gladiators are training.

You look down at the basket full of clean padding that you are putting away, and then you look around, frantically. The room is broad and well-lit; there are no dark corners and no furnishings besides a handful of half-empty weapons racks that will offer little cover. You have nowhere—truly, nowhere—to hide.

Briefly, you contemplate the weapons around you. There is a bow and arrows you could use. Also a trident.

You shove those thoughts away.

The footsteps echo closer. You inhale deeply and resign yourself to continuing your work and hoping that they will walk through without acknowledging you. If you keep your head down and turned away, perhaps, if there is any mercy in the world, he will not recognize you.

"This is the armory," says the Dominus. "And if you'll follow me this way—"

"_Warren_." The footsteps stop. "That slave…"

You freeze where you are, bent over your basket.

"_Servus_," the Dominus says. "You will stand in the presence of your masters."

Breath fights its way from your lungs, and your heart rattles your entire body. Obediently, you set the pads down, and stand.

The Dominus is looking at you, puzzled and without recognition. Two other faces in the room recognize you all too well.

There's MacPherson, eyes wide, body trembling in rage. And on his arm, wearing the most ornate dress you've seen her wear and with her hair curled and fashioned elaborately on the back of her head, is Myka, who stares at you until your gaze meets hers, and then she looks down, and you do, too.

She hasn't lost weight, you don't think, but she somehow looks more gaunt, more tired, more shadowed, regardless.

Behind them stand two man-servants whom you don't recognize.

"What in hell, Warren?" MacPherson explodes. "I gave you that bitch for one reason only, and you couldn't honor it? If I'd known you were just going to make a domestic of her, I would have kept her as one of my whores."

You stiffen at the word.

"This is the one you gave me, James?" the Dominus asks. "My manager was supposed to tell me if she healed."

"It's been _months_, Warren! You didn't think she would have healed by now?"

"I'm terribly sorry, old friend. To be honest, I thought she'd probably died from the wounds and Artie had just taken care of it for me. I'll see to it that he's punished—"

"It was me," Myka says, quietly. "I'm sorry. Leena needed the help and so I suggested the new slave might be more useful that way. I authorized it."

You keep your gaze downcast through the moment of silence that follows Myka's pronouncement.

"Myka," the Dominus finally says. "Your interference with the slaves needs to stop. You're too soft and full of pity and you don't understand that slaves are not Romans and they're slaves for a_ reason._"

"I'm sorry, Father."

You glance up, through your eyelashes, in time to see MacPherson pat her hand gently where it rests on his arm. "Not to worry, dear," he says, "you'll quickly learn that in my home, the slaves know their place."

"As they should here, as well," the Dominus says thickly. With a snap of the fingers he summons one of his man-servants. "Shackle that slave in a cell. You can use those irons over there." He points to a few sets hanging on a wall. Then, to MacPherson: "I'll see to it she's taken care of immediately."

You don't resist as the servant fastens the cuffs around your wrists and ankles and begins to lead you away. There's no fight left in you. The clanging noise of the chains echoes between the stone walls as you walk.

"The last cell on the right before the stairs." Myka's voice calls after you, just before you turn the corner out of sight. "That one's hers."

"Myka!" her father growls. "For gods' sake, none of them are _hers_."

The servant, however, is kind enough to return you to the cell where you've been living. He doesn't speak, but he offers you a slight, apologetic smile as he locks your leg irons to the hook on the wall. He brings you a torch, too, before he closes the door.

\\

Your shackles are short but you find a way to twist so that you can sit on the ground with your back against the adjacent wall, ankles awkwardly crossed in front of you. The pressure of the metal against your sandal straps begins to hurt, so you untie them and manage to pull the leather out from inside the cuffs so you can sit barefoot.

The metal digs directly into your anklebone, now, but you can't do anything about that. It feels cold, no matter how long it presses against your skin. Your entire body is cold, shivering.

You don't mind that cold, or that pain. It proves you aren't completely numb.

You stare at the door. You will it to stay closed, keeping you safe in this room. You will it to open, freeing you from the tense anticipation of your fate.

When you finally hear the latch rattle on the outside of your door, you scramble to pull your sandals back on, tying them loosely below the chains. You are halfway to your feet when the door opens, and—

Well. You didn't expect this.

"Myka," you say. Your throat closes around the dozens, hundreds, thousands of things you want to say to her, from _What are you doing here _to _I'm sorry_ to _You should stay away from me_ to _You were right _to _I love you. _"Myka," you say, again, as you straighten.

She closes the door behind her. She's still wearing the ornate green dress from earlier. Now that she's away from MacPherson, you can let yourself acknowledge, breathlessly, how beautiful she looks.

When she turns to face you, her gaze travels slowly from the chains at your ankles to the ones at your wrists before coming to rest on your face. Again, you're struck by how defeated she seems; how unbelievably tired. She stays on the opposite side of the room from you, where you can't reach her. She crouches to pick up your blanket and tosses it to you across the room.

"I shouldn't let you call me that," she says. "You heard my father today."

Your eyes squeeze shut and you press the heels of your hands into them before you nod, once. Your fingers comb through your hair, pushing it back from your face and holding it there

"You're going to marry him," you say, desperately.

"Yes."

"You don't love him."

"I don't see how that's any of your business," she spits.

You drop your hands, weighted heavy with your chains and let yourself face her. "No," you say. "Of course not."

When you look at her, she has her fingertips pressed to her own eyes, and then she looks upward, through the ceiling, toward the sky.

"My family is embarrassed to have an unwed daughter of my age. And I need to get away from… from here," she says. Her gaze levels with you. "Don't worry. I won't bring you with me."

Her words strike like a physical blow. Your arms wrap themselves across your abdomen, chain stretched taut below your forearms, and you pray to whoever's listening that you can keep yourself together, keep all your pieces from crumbling to dust between your fingers.

"Why have you come here, Domina?" you whisper.

She exhales harshly and takes a half-step toward you. "I need to know what happened, Helena," she says, firmly. "I don't know why you haven't… I need you to stop protecting me, and stop being afraid of me, and just tell me what happened to make James hate you so much."

So he's 'James' now.

"Domina," you choke, "It's not—"

"No, Helena," she says, firmly. "You're going to tell me. You owe me that much."

Your eyes slam shut, and you fumble your way back to the floor. Your hands come to rest flat-palmed on your abdomen, and you nod.

"All right," you say. "I'll tell you."


	8. Christina

**TW: This chapter deals with themes of sexual slavery, and includes references to physical abuse. However, there are NO descriptions of or explicit references to non-consensual sex.**

* * *

You allow yourself a few moments to breathe, eyes closed, fingers fisting and flexing compulsively in the hem of your tunic as though you could wring the words from it like a wet rag.

"If… if I'm going to tell you this story, I need to know that I can tell you the whole thing," you finally say, quietly. You open your eyes to look at her, where she stands opposite you, and far above you.

"Yes, of course," she says, like it should be obvious.

A harsh gasp of breath escapes through your teeth. "There's no 'of course' about it," you say. "There will be parts that you don't want to hear. Things I am certain you will wish you could forget after you've heard them."

"This won't be the first time you've underestimated my ability to handle things I don't want to hear," she says, too quickly. Her eyes flick down at you and you think, maybe, she didn't mean for that to sound as cruel as it felt.

You swallow hard and gesture toward the blanket where you sleep. "It's long. You may want to sit."

She does, and continues to eye you, impassively. "You're stalling, Helena," she says.

You nod. Inhale once, deeply, and let the air find its way into your tensed toes, your twitching fingertips. "All right," you say.

You start by telling her the story of growing up as the daughter of a warrior in Brittany; you tell her about your military strategies and how your brother would present your ideas to the elders before going into battle. You talk about how frustrated you were, that you could have these ideas but none of the recognition that went with them, but you buried that under the knowledge that you were helping to keep your family, your community, safe.

Then your brother began to refuse your counsel. When the elders took Charles' plans into battle, everyone you loved was killed or captured.

"I know you've heard some of this before," you say, "but it's important. Because I think—I think part of me began to fall apart even then, when I had this incredible gift, and I was so full of ideas that nobody, not one damned person, would listen to, after my brother stopped. So the first thing I lost was my voice. And I lost my freedom almost immediately thereafter."

Her eyes cut impassively through the dim cell, but she nods at you to indicate she's listening.

"When we were first herded off, I was surrounded by fellow prisoners from my home. We could, at least, talk to one another, offer each other support. But the army sold us in batches to slave traders in Caesarodunum. I was transported with slaves from other places—many who were born in Rome—from there to Augustodunum, where we were regrouped and sold again. So it went, on and on, from city to city. The travel was atrocious. Sometimes we would walk, tied to one another, scores of leagues in a day. Other times we would be crammed like packed fish into ox-carts. And by the time I arrived here, in Roma, nobody from my home was with me anymore. There was one man who spoke a language similar to mine, but when I was sold for the final time in the marketplace here—well, MacPherson bought me, but not him.

"The loneliness… there are no words, Domina. To be surrounded by thousands of people and unable to speak to a single soul. To find yourself in a city of stone, when you have always lived among trees and grass and moss the shade of your eyes."

They close, at that, and she turns her head away. "Helena," she says. "Just your story. Please."

You shift your feet, try to tuck your knees against your chest but the chains are too short. You do your best to wrap your arms around your legs, anyway, and close your eyes.

"MacPherson bought me and two others—a woman and a young man—but they were born into slavery and spoke Latin easily. When they dumped us in the brothel, those other two could follow directions from the procurers and the other slaves, but with only a few words of functional Latin, I was adrift.

"Have you ever been alone in a place where you can't speak to a soul, Domina?" Your eyes open, briefly, to look at her face; her eyes remain impassive, gazing back at you. "It's terrible. It's as though people assume you must be stupid, just because you speak a different tongue. Instead of speaking clearly and using simpler words and gestures to help you learn, they just get louder and perform asinine charades and then laugh when you still can't decipher their meaning." You close your eyes again.

"The second day I was there, one of the managers slapped me across the face for, I suppose, failing to obey an order I couldn't understand. But I was a soldier, and not one to simply take that kind of aggression. I punched him back. I knocked him over, pinned him to the ground, and needed no language to make clear that I could easily dislocate all of his fingers. He screamed and the guards came; they pulled me off him. I earned myself twenty strokes of the rod to the soles of my feet. Walking was agony for weeks.

"But being unable to walk did not make me unfit to work, though. From the first day, I worked. And, gods, it was horrible. For weeks, I wept every night, from the fear and the loneliness and the degradation. I learned the language relatively quickly, out of necessity, but in some ways that made it worse because then I could understand the words, the insults, they would hurl at me. At us—all of us, trapped in that hell."

"The clients would hurl insults?" Myka asks.

"Some of them," you say, without opening your eyes. "But the procurers, more often. All of the managers. And… and the Dominus."

You swallow the urge to open your eyes, to see how Myka reacts to that. You will let her process that information in privacy.

"MacPherson thought remarkably little of us, despite the fact that we were the source of his wealth," you say.

"That life will kill even the most resilient of souls. The important parts of me shrank, withered, curled up. My spirit became small and hard, like a pebble trapped in my sandal, but one that I couldn't dig free. All it did was cause me pain. If I could only purge myself of that tiny, remaining piece of myself, if I could turn myself into the _thing_ they wanted me to be, I might have stopped suffering. But that, perhaps, is the worst trick of all: we can remove a broken, blackened, diseased tooth, but a broken, blackened, diseased soul, which hurts to much more, is inoperable.

"I survived by killing everything in me that was human except for my survival instinct.

"And then, I fell victim to the quickening that befell almost all of us eventually. I became pregnant." Your fingers finally release the hem of your tunic and curl into fists that you press, firmly, into your belly, on either side of your navel.

"I felt nothing, at the discovery, except the faintest hope that I might get a reprieve from the work during the final weeks before childbirth and perhaps the week after." You open your eyes and they seek hers out, again, cautiously. Her arms are wrapped around herself, but she meets your gaze.

"You know what happens to babies born in brothels, yes?" you ask.

She shakes her head.

"They are killed immediately after birth, most of the time. Often the mother is made to do it herself."

"Helena," Myka murmurs, one hand untucking itself and reaching, ever-so-slightly, toward you, before clenching back into a resolute fist. "Did you have to do that?"

You shake your head, corners of your lips quirking up a little. "No," you say. Then, after a pause, "I don't know why my child was allowed to live, but…" the words die in your throat. You see Myka's face surrounded by sand, under your foot: that look of betrayal.

"Helena," she says, again. "Please. 'But' what?"

You inhale deeply, hold it, and release it slowly before saying, "I suspect some primal instinct compelled the Dominus let my child live because of the likelihood that he was the father."

She stares at you through this news, her face an unreadable mask.

"You already know, Domina, that he makes frequent use of the women in his brothel." You shrug. "I was his favorite, for quite some time. I don't know why. For several months, he came to me often. Three, four days a week; sometimes daily, even. He wasn't… bad. Not really. Not violent or angry, like some of the clients could be. But never gentle or tender, either."

She clears her throat. "And the baby?"

The memory of your daughter's face as an infant, fat and round with thin, pursed lips that would smack contentedly before she fell asleep, pulls the slightest trace of a smile at the corners of your eyes.

"I felt nothing for her for the full duration of my pregnancy. I was a pebble trapped in the sandal of a doll, and neither dolls nor pebbles have babies. In the last weeks, MacPherson did pull me out of the beds, as was customary when this happened. He had me work in the house as a domestic. I met his wife there, too. He largely ignored me, and at first, she paid me as little attention as she could, which suited me fine. But as time passed, she became more and more harsh toward me. I remember filling the water basin in her room, one morning, and on my way out I tripped over a small chest on the floor, near the door, which hadn't been there seconds earlier. Between my belly and the pitcher in my hands, I couldn't see it. I was days from delivery, by that point, so was hard to stand up from where I had fallen. She looked at me and said, 'For a brood mare, you're not terribly sure-footed.'"

You hear Myka's sharp intake of breath, at that. You look at her and she continues to watch you, one carefully-trimmed nail grazing absently at her temple.

"She hated me, of course, because she knew what her husband had done with me," you say, in a tone you try to keep impassive. The implications of the statement are for Myka to draw, not for you to deliver.

"When I went into labor, they sent me back downstairs. A woman named Jane helped me with the delivery. It was nothing to me, really. It felt like removing a part of my body that had over-grown, like hair, or fingernails. But then, when it was all over—she cried. My little girl. I reached out for her and Jane tried to tell me not to do it, not to touch her, because that would only make it harder. She said she would 'take care of it' for me, if I wanted." You shake your head. "She was trying to do me a kindness."

You feel your fingers unclench, palms flattening against your thighs. "When I held her… something came alive in me that I had killed over those previous two years. She was the most beautiful child. She had a full head of black hair from the moment she was born, and dark brown eyes, like mine."

"Helena," Myka says, softly. You open your eyes and meet her gaze. "Your blanket is by your feet," she says.

Images and memories of your daughter are flooding your mind, and you can't quite decipher how to respond to her apparent non-sequitur.

"You're shivering," she says, after a moment. You look down and see your hands and thighs are, indeed, trembling against each other. You fumble for the blanket that fell to the ground when Myka tossed it to you, earlier, and pull it over yourself. The edge crumples in your fist, under your chin, and the whole thing trembles like a tent in a windstorm.

"I'm sorry," you mutter, to Myka, to your Christina, to yourself.

"Please." Myka's gentle voice warms like a sunbath. "Go on."

Your eyes fix on the weave of the blanket before you. "I kept her. My Christina. For the first days, I kept waiting for the Dominus to take her from me, but he never did. When I was recovered enough to work again, Jane and some of the other women were kind enough to help me. There was a boy who worked there too, as a cashier, and he became fond of her. He would keep her sometimes when nobody else could. Every night, I would sleep with her on my chest." Your hand finds its way to your sternum as the echoes of her warmth there, her sweet baby smell, flood your senses, and you smile.

"I came back to life after she was born," you say, as your eyes open. Myka smiles at you, sadly. I had purpose. I had this tiny person who relied on me." You shake your head a little. "It's a little ironic. I became the best slave they could ask for, after I had Christina, because I knew we were both at the mercy of the Domini. I worked hard. I never complained. I was determined that my child would not grow into slavery. I would earn coin or gifts, sometimes, from clients who were fond of me, and I put almost all of it away, hoping that I could save enough over the years to pay for her manumission. The only coin I spent was to purchase herbs that helped to keep me from becoming pregnant again.

"I listened to the people around me and worked hard to cultivate my Latin. I was determined to teach her to speak the language as the nobles did, not the accented, low version of the slaves. And I taught her my language as well. Before she was even old enough to speak, I began to tell her the stories of my homeland.

"She was a treasure, Domina," you say. "In this place of horror and misery, she could laugh, and smile, and play, and sing, and she could make do all of those things with her. She held the whole of my heart between her tiny, perfect fingers." Wetness wells up in your eyes and you scrub it away angrily with the corner of the blanket.

"During all this time, MacPherson continued to come to me. He never acknowledged Christina but once, when, out of nowhere, he thought it fit to remind me that he could be rid of her in an instant if she impacted my work." A humorless laugh escapes you. "As though I could ever forget that.

"As she got older, things became a little bit more challenging. By the time she was three, and running all over the place, it became difficult to keep her from seeing things she should not see.

"The cook from the house upstairs was a great help. She would keep Christina upstairs in a corner of the kitchen, where she would nap and play with dolls I made for her from rags and sticks, and I would fetch her at the ends of my shifts, so she could eat and sleep with me."

You swallow, deeply. Your shivering has stopped but every muscle is tense under your skin, prepared for flight. "And then one day, when she was four years old, I went to fetch her and she was gone."

Myka gasps. You quirk the corner of your lip at her and shrug, helplessly.

"The cook told me the Dominus had collected her earlier in the day. Apparently Christina had cut herself in her play, and began crying, and woke the Domina from her nap. She was furious. MacPherson came and picked my little girl up and took her away.

"As soon as she told me that, I ran into the house—a punishable offence, without invitation, but I was terrified. I found the Domina in the dining area. She was eating olives and dates, and drinking wine. Her gray hair was curled into an intricate, young woman's hairstyle and her eyes were lined with kohl.

"She was furious that I had come in, of course, but I told her that I was only looking for my daughter. And I swear she looked smug, she looked proud, when she said she'd had quite enough of 'that runt' disrupting her sleep and that the Dominus had taken her to sell to a trader."

A low sound escapes Myka's throat and you look at her. Her eyes are red and she runs the back of one finger under her lashes. "Gods," she says quietly, and sighs. "I hoped you weren't going to say that."

"It was within his right, and hers, of course. A slave's children belong to her masters. But, Domina—"

"Myka," she cuts in, and shakes her head. "I can't… gods. Just, call me Myka."

You incline your head. "I begged her," you whisper. "I begged her to reconsider, to ask him to reconsider. To bring my daughter back or to sell us both together. I had nothing to offer her in exchange but I fell to my knees and I touched her feet and I _begged_ with a desperation that would have brought shame to my mother's eyes.

Your gaze flits up to where Myka's hands are fisted together, over her knees. "She laughed, Myka. She _laughed_ at me in the most despairing, desperate, and humiliating moment of my life. And then—can you guess what she said?"

Myka shakes her head, helplessly, and shrugs.

"She said—and these words will be burned into me for as long as I live—'the calf must be weaned from the heifer if men wish to drink the milk.'"

You scrub angrily at your eyes, again. When you look at Myka you see a blackened streak of kohl tracking its way down her cheek. She runs the back of a hand under her nose.

"I think I can guess how this story ends," she says, "but please. Finish."

You let out a long breath. "I wish I could say something broke in me in that moment, Myka, but that wouldn't be true. I had broken a long time before that, but I had had a child who gave me a reason to hold the pieces of myself together and make myself human again. But then they took my daughter, and this woman, she laughed at my suffering and she called me nothing more than a _cow_, all at once, and—" you choke out a breath.

"There was a wine bottle," you say, voice dropping into lower registers. "One of the expensive kind, made of glass, on the table. I picked it up and, gods, I hit her. Just once, across the temple, but it was enough."

Myka's eyes slam closed and she drops her face into her hands. "James told everyone she was kicked by a horse." Her voice is soft, raspy.

"He should have said a cow," you say, dryly. It might be funny if it weren't true. "I suppose it would be bad for business to let it get out that your whores are of the murdering sort."

"I knew her my whole life," Myka says, finally. "She was always so kind to me."

For a moment, the silence lingers between you. You rest your head against the wall behind you and pull the blanket tighter under your chin, the chains on your wrists cold against your stomach.

"I'm sure she was," you say. "And I killed her. And I won't ask for your forgiveness, just as I never asked for his." You level your gaze with her. "Because I'm not sorry. Even that day, I never hid from what I did. I stayed there with her until MacPherson got home because I didn't want anyone else to be punished for what I had done."

Your hand absently crawls up over your shoulder and traces the top edge of the thick, welted scars under your tunic. "I had thought he would simply execute me. But he beat me bloody, off and on, for days. But after his wife had laughed in the face of my despair, I still hold this victory: that I never once asked for mercy, and I never once apologized."

"Gods, Helena," Myka whispers. "I don't know what to do with this."

You meet her eyes confidently, for the first time since she walked into your cell, and say, "We're the same, MacPherson and I. He took the person I loved from me, and I did the same to him. The difference is that I had nothing else to live for, but vengeance. Even my body hadn't been mine for years. He still has a business, and a home, and his health, and his freedom."

You feel one shoulder twitch up a little. "And now he wants to make you part of what he lives for, which is another thing that we have in common. Except that he has wealth and a home and status to offer you, while even my skin and bones are not mine to give."

Myka shakes her head again, desperately, as she looks down, lips pressed to the inside of her forearm, elbow resting on her raised knee. "You can't say that kind of thing now, Helena. Not after—"

"I know," you say. You lean forward, reach as close to her as you can without touching. "Go," you say. "Marry him. He will give you a good life, I'm sure. Forget about me when you walk out of this cell."

She's still looking down, shaking her head, and you can hear her sniff against her upturned arm.

"But right now," you say, "While you're still here, I hope you'll believe me when I say that I _am_ so, so, so sorry for what I did to you. I wish more than anything that I could undo it. I was just… I was too broken and blind to see what you were offering me, not only from your love, but from your friendship and your respect."

You inhale deeply. "I was too broken to realize I was in love with you."

"Helena," she murmurs again, her breath hitching.

"I _am_ in love with you. But even if I weren't a murderer, and even if I hadn't held a blade to your throat, I would still be a slave with nothing to offer. So go, and be as happy as your kind, beautiful, generous heart deserves."

Myka's gaze flits everywhere around your small cell, from all the walls to the floor to the ceiling, as though the room is closing in on her; she looks everywhere but at you. Her cheeks are stained dark with the kohl from her eyes.

With a soft cry that sounds like failure, she pitches forward toward you, her hands coming to rest on the sides of your face, and her forehead pressing into yours. Her knees grind her beautiful gown into the dirt floor. You grip at her wrists without thinking, your chains sliding down your forearms, but you keep your gaze down, away from her eyes. She turns her hands in your grip and slides them down your forearms until they close around the heavy cuffs, and then she tucks the tip of one finger of each hand between the metal and your skin. It feels as breathtakingly intimate as any kiss she's ever given you.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, quietly. "For what happened to you, and…" she trails off with a sigh. "Just—I'm sorry."

"You have no reason to be," you whisper back.

She tilts her head up and kisses your forehead, firmly, and then the top of your head, as she stands, her hands trailing back up to yours and squeezing them before she steps back.

"Thank you for telling me," she says. You nod, once.

And then, like a secret, she's gone.

* * *

**What, you came for the angst and pain, right? (The comment from tantedrago shaming my cow cracked me up. My horse this time, perhaps? Or my dog, which is the only animal I actually own.) I will do my best to make all this suffering worthwhile in the long run.**

**I've reached the point where what I've published has caught up to what I've written, so subsequent updates may come a little more slowly.**


	9. The Devil Makes Us Sin

**A/N: this chapter took a little longer, but hopefully the length and content will make up for that. Shout-out to Jess82x who gave me the idea for the little h/c scene in here.**

**Also, my plans for this narrative have shifted a little as I've been writing it. Unfortunately as a result I've kind of retconned Artie. As in, it will probably be better for you to think of him as an OC with Artie's name, rather than as an actual AU representation of the Artie we know and love. He is a very minor character in this whole thing. The flipside is that I think the new plot plans are better than the skeleton I started with, so. Enjoy.**

* * *

Myka leaves you swimming in the scent of the unfamiliar perfume that had mercifully covered the scent of her, which would have drowned you. You curl up on the floor, under your blanket, and close your eyes. Sometime during the night your torch burns out and you drift into a dark abyss that smells like your memories of Myka and sounds like your daughter's laughter.

Your shoulder cramps suddenly and you stretch your arms over your head to relieve it. Your fingers brush against cloth. They find an edge and pinch, pulling the fabric toward you: it's the pouch of _Latrunculi_ playing pieces. As if of their own accord, your fingers fumble with and eventually untie the pull-string. The stones inside are smooth, polished, as ever. You palm two of them and bring them to your face: one black, one white.

You close your fingers around them. Their cool surface warms against your skin as you roll them slowly, rhythmically, in your hand. They click in meditative consonance.

When you eventually drift off, your hand lies open, palm-up, on the ground, the pieces nestled against one another in the space between your thumb and index finger.

\\

You wake from fitful sleep when Leena comes in, one hand balancing a tray with food and a stack of cloth, the other hand carrying a bucket. She has a water skin slung over her shoulder.

"It's dark in here," she says, as she sets everything on the floor. She pulls your burned-out torch from its sconce and trades it for one of the lit ones from the corridor.

You sit up slowly, leaving the stones on the floor. Your ankles are definitely bruised from where they rested in the shackles and you feel stiff from the awkward position of your sleep.

"I'm sorry I didn't get up for work this morning," you say, with a small, wry smile, "I've been a little bit tied up."

She smiles down at you, only a hint of pity showing through—your pride compels you to ignore that. She cocks her head to the side. "Happens to the best of us," she says, crouching down beside you. "I don't have the key, I'm afraid. You're stuck here until Artie comes by. So I brought you some breakfast, some clean clothes, and the rags and water are for you to clean yourself up if you want to. And the bucket… well. Like I said, you could be stuck here for awhile, so you might… need it."

You look around at the items scattered around you on the floor.

"A change of clothes would be lovely," you say, "but…" you hold up your chained wrists.

"We can just cut the seams at the shoulders of the tunic you're wearing now," she replies. "A quick stitch will fix it up later. And this clean one knots at the neck so it'll be easy to put on."

When you nod in acquiescence, she pulls a small knife from her waistband and carefully slits the seams at your shoulders so you can pull the tunic over your head. You use the water and rags to wipe away the grit clinging to your skin from your night lying in the dirt, and then you wring a rag of clean water over your head and comb it through your hair with your fingers. Leena helps you to twist the clean tunic around your body—a difficult task to handle alone with bound wrists—and knots it behind your neck. You dislike the way this style of dress leaves your upper back exposed, but the comfort of wearing something clean outweighs your concern.

By the time you're done, you feel human enough that the idea of food is not unappetizing. You tear a few bites from the piece of bread and swallow them.

Through this whole ritual, Leena has been silent apart from the soft commands and questions ("lift your arms," "is this wrapped tightly enough?") she spoke to help you dress.

"Do you know what's going to happen to me, today?" you ask her, quietly, as you sit back down together on the floor.

"I don't know more than you do. I have a guess, but it's probably the same as yours." She meets your eyes. "I will help you if I can."

Your eyebrows raise before you can stop them. You look at the items surrounding you on the floor: evidence of her kindness.

"I don't understand how you do this," you say.

"What?" she asks you.

"This." You gesture to your surroundings. "You're so kind. So patient, and thoughtful. You bear the burden of the slave life like it weighs nothing."

She smiles a little and inclines her head. "My mother taught me to keep still and be patient until the next course of action becomes clear. I'm… waiting."

"Waiting?" you ask. "For what?"

She looks at you with a piercing gaze that feels like she's seeing through your skin to the shade of your blood, the shape of your brain, the color of your soul. Then she says: "My chance to make a move."

You cock an eyebrow at her. She cocks one back at you. Then you hear a soft "thunk" and the knife that had been on the floor between you is wedged, vibrating, in the center of a dark brown knot in the wood of your cell door. The distance is short, but she moved so quickly you barely had time to register the throw. You blink at the knife for a minute, and then turn to stare at her, eyes wide.

"I didn't begin my life as a slave," she says. "I don't intend to end it as one, either."

You shake your head a little. "Are you hoping for manumission?"

She shrugs. "Maybe, though I doubt I'd get far as a freedwoman." She runs one hand up her opposite forearm, drawing your attention to her dark skin. "Mostly I'm hoping that when the opportunity comes up to get out, I'll notice it and have the strength to take it."

You shake your head and smile at her, broadly. "To think I thought I knew you, Leena."

She smiles back and ducks her head shyly: the resurfacing of the Leena you know. "Helena," she says, after a moment. "I'm going to do what I can to help you stay safe through…" she gestures to your chains. "If there's anything I can do."

You look down at your chains and suddenly the reality of your condition, of where you're going to wind up today, settles over you like a yoke. You take deep, calming breaths, and will your hands not to tremble.

"Actually," you say, "there is one thing."

She nods, waiting.

You inhale deep and shuddering. "There are herbs that help to prevent pregnancy."

Leena bites her lip and reaches out to squeeze your shoulder. "I've heard of that. I'll talk to Claudia. I think between us, we can get some for you."

"It costs money," you say, "and—and I don't have any."

"It's okay. I have some, Claudia has more, and—" she looks away, then back at you—"I think Domina Myka might help, maybe, if Claudia asked her."

You swallow hard. "You are a blessing, Leena, you know that? You have done more than any person I've met to remind me that goodness still exists in people."

She smiles softly, then inhales, and says: "You killed MacPherson's wife."

Your brow furrows. "How did you… did Domina tell you?"

She shakes her head. "Slaves talk, Helena. You know that. Claudia gets to go out often, with the Lady Myka, and she met some of MacPherson's slaves out in the market. I've had a hunch for months that you were the one who did it."

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"Because I didn't want to scare you away before I could get to know you." Her hand slips down from your shoulder and grips your hand. "You're a good person, Helena. They say the slave who killed Lady MacPherson had a child taken from her. And if that was you, well-were I in your position, I would have done the same thing." Her eyes hold yours gently, but unapologetically. "There but by the grace of the gods go any of us, I'd say."

This is the first time since you committed your crime that anyone has looked at you and said it was understandable. Not forgivable, necessarily, but understandable. The simple moment of recognition—of being truly _seen_— makes something well up in you, hard and hot in your belly. You pull Leena to your chest, fingers clutching her shoulders in an awkward semblance of a hug despite your chained wrists. Her arms immediately fold around the outside of yours and she hugs you back, warm and solid.

When she pulls away, she gathers the rags, water-skin, and your old tunic from the floor, then stands and pulls the knife from where it remains wedged in the door. She leaves you the bucket and the food.

"You're tough enough for this, Helena," she says, with a tight smile, before she ducks her head and steps out into the corridor.

\\

Artie comes in to get you much later, after you've attempted to eat a second meal, as evening approaches. Wordlessly, he unlocks the cuffs from your ankles and waits while you flex your feet to relieve the stiffness and tie your sandals back on.

"Come on," he says.

You follow him through the armory and across the yard, through a locked gate to the area where the gladiators' cells overlook the training space. Gladiators crow at you through the small windows in their doors, whistles and catcalls and _keep the chains on_s and _you'll like it when it's my turn, baby_s.

The warm, soft parts inside you, made safe this morning in your short visit with Leena, shrivel and harden in a familiar way with each step you take. When Artie stops walking and faces you, you imagine your face a mask, your eyes vacant, your soul small and hard and far away.

He unlocks your wrists, wordlessly, and then opens the cell door and shoves you inside.

"By your request, Lattimer," he says, as he closes the door behind you. "Have fun."

Of course it's Pete. He probably thinks you owe him something after everything you put him through that day with Myka.

He's standing near the back of his cell, contemplating you, arms folded across his bare chest. When he doesn't move, you look down at your wrists, stained a little grey from the manacles, and rub them a little.

"Sit, if you want," he says, finally.

You don't want. You cross your arms over your chest and stand there, waiting for him to make a move.

When he does move, it's only to the bench where he sleeps. He sits down and wordlessly begins to untie his sandals.

"If you're expecting me to come over there and offer you some kind of seduction, I fear you're woefully mistaken about how this is going to work," you say.

Pete drops his half-untied laces, sits up, and tilts his head back in exasperation. "No offense," he says, " but the only time you and I have spent together involved you coming _this_ close to murdering my friend. That memory? Is not sexy. So I can't say I'm interested."

He goes back to unwinding his sandal laces. You palm the back of your neck, the other gladiators' catcalls echoing in your skull.

"Why am I here with you?" you ask, as he pulls his second foot free.

"I should be asking you that."

"I killed the Roman who sold my child," you say

His eyebrows raise at that, and he cocks his head. "I think I heard about that when it happened," he says, thoughtfully.

"Your turn," you say. "Why am I here, in your cell, watching you take your shoes off, when I was sent here to—to be a plaything for you lot as punishment for my crime?"

"Because despite what the nobles like to think, gladiators are not all monsters. I had a mother and a wife, once. I don't like the idea of treating a woman like that, no matter what she may have done." He bends down and resumes untying his laces.

You shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. "So what, then? Are we to sit here and face one another, twiddling our thumbs?"

"If you want," Pete says, as he finishes removing the second sandal and flexes his feet. You notice they are rubbed raw in places, where the arena sand worked its way under the leather straps. "We can twiddle our thumbs, we can have staring contests, we can play word games. Or we can just ignore each other, which, if I'm honest, is probably going to be my preference most of the time." He looks up at you. "Though I'd really prefer it if you'd sit down. Makes me nervous, the way you're hovering."

You reach behind with one hand to find the stone wall and then lower yourself carefully to the floor.

You swallow. "Did… did Domina put you up to this?"

"She might have asked me to do what I can to protect you," he says, as he turns to recline on his bench, arms folded behind his head as it tips sideways to look at you. "Best I can do is keep you with me for as long as I can get away with it. I'm high enough up the food chain in here that nobody but Artie can force me to give you up before I'm ready, and I think Artie shares my perspective on…" he gestures into the air, vaguely. "Well. You know. Rape." He opens his eyes to look at you again. "I know of at least one other gladiator in here who feels like I do and will probably help. But there are at least a half-dozen we need to keep you away from, for sure. And then everybody else, I don't know what they think."

"Which makes them dangerous to me," you say.

"Pretty much, yeah," Pete replies. "Truth be told: I don't know how long we'll be able to keep this up. I'm really hoping that Myka's got some kind of plan up her sleeve to get you out of here because there's only so long we'll be able to keep you away from Marcus and those guys."

You remember Marcus from the Armory, that day with Myka.

Pete's cell, like all the gladiators' cells, overlooks the yard. There is a window in the cell door that's larger than the one in your cell from the servants' quarters, and from where you're sitting on the floor, you can see the darkening sky.

You sit in silence for some time. Pete sits up after awhile and begins to stretch his arms, and back. You duck low, instinctively, to avoid his limbs in the small space. He spends several minutes rolling and prodding at one shoulder.

"Are you in pain?" you ask.

He chuckles a little. "Most of the time," he says.

"That shoulder?"

"When I was a fighting gladiator, before I became a trainer, I ended up in the arena with this huge guy… dislocated my shoulder. The doc here popped it back in, but it's never been quite the same." He pats his left shoulder with his right hand for emphasis.

When the stars glow brightly from the black tapestry beyond the window, a chill settles into the room. You tuck your legs up against your body and tug ineffectually at the hem of your tunic.

"Time for sleep," Pete says. He scoots off the front of the bench so that he's sitting on the floor, just in front of you, and pulls what appears to be a well-worn deer hide into his lap. "There's only one fur," he says, looking down, almost embarrassed. "So we'll have to share it."

He unfolds the blanket and holds an edge up for you as he lays down on the floor beside the narrow bench. You slip your sandals off quickly and stretch out on the floor beside him. The fur isn't quite large enough to cover you fully, but you're grateful for anything between you and the cold. In a few minutes you'll stop shivering, you're sure.

You and Pete lie alongside one another stiffly, like stones on a game board. Eventually, Pete says: "You're freezing. And we should probably keep up appearances anyway."

He pulls an arm out from under the cover and extends it toward you. You hesitate for a moment and then roll closer to him. Your head finds the hollow of his good shoulder and he folds his arm around your back. He is warm and solid, and the fur reaches all the way to the ground behind you, now.

Pete's breathing evens out within minutes. You lie awake long into the night. For a minute, you torture yourself by imagining what it would feel like to spend a night like this wrapped around a body thinner and softer than Pete's, with curls that would tickle your forehead. But you push that away.

The irony is not lost on you, though, that this night, the first of your punishment, is probably the most comfortable night you've spent since you lost your daughter.

\\

Within two days you've learned the routine. The gladiators are gone through most of the day, and during that time you can move through the gladiators' side of the ludus relatively safely. You can bathe, then, and use the latrine. Leena comes in to clean, and you offer to help her even though you don't have to, because you can already feel the edges of boredom creeping in.

She brings you food, too, so you can avoid the gladiators' eating area.

She's relieved to hear that Pete is protecting you. But you're thankful anyway when, on the second day, she hands you a packet of the herbs you had requested.

\\

Late on the fourth morning, you are walking back to Pete's cell from the bath when you see Myka.

She is wearing a dress and not her men's tunic, and she doesn't have her sword. Her strides are purposeful as she moves from one cell door to the next, looking in each window.

Your heart trips over itself.

"Domina?" you say.

"Helena," she says in a rush, before picking up her skirts and running toward you, coming to an awkward halt a few feet away.

Your eyes widen when you see her cheek.

"What happened to you?" you exclaim, at the same time that she says "I'm so glad to see you're all right—"

"Your _face_," you press. A mottled blue and purple bruise paints her right cheek, with a small gash above her jawline. It's not bleeding, but it looks like it only recently stopped.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she says, her fingers prodding the bruised skin gently. "Really."

The emotion welling up inside you is familiar and terrifying. You can tell that the gash was made by the stone of a ring. Somebody struck her. And you want to find that person and make them suffer, make them pay—

"We should find Vanessa," you say, to interrupt your own thoughts. "She can clean that up for you, and—"

"Helena," Myka cuts in. "I just came from her. It's already cleaned up. It's okay."

A beat of silence hangs in the air between you. Myka's hands clench and unclench. Then, as though she's made a decision, she lunges forward and grabs one of your hands with both of hers.

"I came here to see you," she said. "I just… I had to. Can we talk for a few minutes?

You shake off the paralysis brought on by her touch. "Yes. Of course."

You wrap your hand around one of hers to lead her to the end of the row and into an unused gladiator's cell. She sits on the wooden bench and invites you to sit beside her. The bruise on her cheek glares at you and without thinking you raise your fingers to touch it, gently, as though you could soothe it away. Her eyelids drift closed.

"Who…?" you ask.

"My father," she says, and shakes her head. "Really, Helena, _you're_ the one we should be talking about right now."

You drop your hands into your lap and look away. "I'm… I'm fine, actually."

Myka nods. "So Pete is…"

"A godsend." You look up at her again. "Truly. I can't fathom why a person like that is living in here. He's Roman, too, isn't he?"

"Yes. You should ask him his story. He'd probably tell it." Myka's lips quirk into a half-smile and then she grimaces, bringing her fingers to her cheek.

"What happened, Myka?" you ask softly. Your fingers are touching her jawline, gently, before you notice they've moved. She doesn't pull away.

"My father. He…" She trails off, shakes her head. Her hand takes yours from her face and wraps itself tightly around your fingers. "I tried to call it off, with MacPherson," she says.

You shake your head _no_ and breathe, "Myka," your hand shifting in hers so you can wrap your fingers around her palm. She clings back, tighter.

"I couldn't do it," Myka says. "After I heard your story, I just… I couldn't even look at him anymore. The idea of him touching me was repulsive. I couldn't live in his house knowing what took place below it."

You shake your head in sadness, confusion, frustration.

"My father was—well, he was furious, obviously," she continues. "He's on his way over to MacPherson's now to undo what I said and make sure the wedding moves forward as planned."

"He's your _father_, Myka, surely he wouldn't force you into a marriage you don't want?"

"I think he's decided that if I'm left to my own devices any longer, I'll never marry. The older I get, the fewer my options." She shrugs, helplessly, and looks down at her lap. "He may be right."

Suddenly, decisively, she turns to face you fully and presses her hands into the sides of your face. "By law I have to do what my father says," she whispers. "But I needed you to know that I tried to stop it."

Her eyes bore into hers and your gaze flits from her left to her right and back again, the emerald you thought you'd lost forever.

"Do you understand?" she says, her voice cracking. "I _need_ you to know."

You nod between her palms, you want to be reassuring but you only feel desperate, and sad, and afraid for her, so very afraid, and the feeling of her this close, of her hands on your skin is intoxicating and devastating and threatens to split your chest in two.

And then she's kissing you, hard and full. Her tongue searches for yours and her fingers weave into your hair and she tastes like everything you've missed and dreamed about and never thought you'd have again. Your hands are on her wrists, an echo of that last night in your own cell. You want to draw her closer but you know you should push her away, to end this destructive connection because the hope and warmth in your chest is the cruelest thing you could feel right now, and because she is so good, so supernaturally _good_ and you are too broken to be trusted anywhere near her.

You feel her warm hands travel down your neck and begin to fumble with the knot holding your tunic together. It jolts you enough that you find the strength to push her away, just far enough to rest your forehead against hers.

"We can't," you murmur.

She's gasping, and you feel her warm breath puffing against your lips and chin.

"I know we shouldn't," she says, "but I just… I just…"

Her eyes are too close for you to be able to see them clearly but you can tell when they flick up and sear their green gaze into yours.

"Nothing makes me happier than you do," she says, and you can't help the way your heart trips in your chest. "Even after… after that day in the yard. I was angry and I knew I should hate you, I knew it, but I just… I couldn't."

You wish she would stop because you fear you might cry, but right now your resolve to stop her is weak and hers to continue is strong.

"And I've forgiven you for the trident," she murmurs. "I just—I try to imagine a future where I could be happy and a piece of every vision is you, Helena. It's always you but I can't—I can't…" She shakes her head. There are too few words, really, for everything she can't do.

"In a different world I would give you anything, everything," you gasp, softly. "The moon on a platter, just to see you smile."

"I don't want the moon on a platter in any world, Helena. I just want you."

The fragile threads of your resolve unravel and tear and you don't know who started it but you're kissing again, all searching lips and seeking tongues. You pull her closer and wrap your arms around her, your chests awkwardly pressed together as you sit side-by-side on the narrow bench. Her hands tug at the knot behind your neck and the top of your tunic slips down like water over rocks. You whimper a little when she cups your breast. It's her thumb on your nipple that jolts you to attention, though, because _this is happening_. Of all the things you don't deserve, this is among the first: another chance to have your beloved Myka in your arms, after everything you've done, after what you did _to her_.

You stand in the center of the cell and pull her with you. Her dress is a more ornamental version of yours; a single knot at the back of her neck holds its pieces together and when you untie it the fabric falls to a pool at her feet. You undo the belt that keeps yours at your waist, and you are nude together in the shadows. And then you lie down together, stretched out on the cell floor, and for the first time you feel her skin against yours without the film of your ulterior motives between you.

Her lips are on your neck and she's trying to coax you onto your back—but no, you won't let that happen. You catch her wrist and push her back because you want to make love to her. You want to gather everything she makes you feel and spill it from your lips into her skin, you want her every breath to remind her of how cherished she is in this moment.

Your legs tangle with hers, your pelvis in the cradle of her hips as you find the soft center of her throat with your mouth. The last time you touched her here it was with a weapon and you wish you could erase that memory, overwhelm it with the feeling of your lips and tongue. You linger there for a long moment until she cups your jaw with both of her hands and lifts you away.

"I forgive you," she murmurs. "I do."

You claim her mouth again, deeply, as your fingernails outline the sensitive sides of her breasts, the ridges of her ribs, the curve of her waist. Your lips follow your touch downward, first to her nipples (she bites her lower lip, hard) then lower, until you nip the point of her hip and follow its crease between her thighs. Her fingers tighten in your hair when you touch her lightly with her tongue, and then you press her open and offer her this most intimate of kisses, your tongue pressing into her until she presses up into you, hard, harder, one hand in your hair and the other clasped tightly across her own mouth, muffling her soft cry as she comes. She is beautiful and perfect and you are torn in opposite directions because you want to treasure her, you want to cradle her and worship her, but at the same time you _want _her, make her feel the full, rabid strength of everything you feel for her, to make her _yours_.

You keep your mouth on her because once is not enough. Your eyes find hers as your tongue finds her clitoris and she's looking down at you with a curl in her lip like a predator, and you realize you're both in the same place, wanting to consume and be consumed. You dig your fingers into her hips, pressing them down, as she wraps both hands in your hair and you push as she pulls. Her body demands that you give and yours demands that she take all the fear and the want and the need and the love that your touch can possibly express. She whispers your name—_Helena, oh, Helena_—as her hips press up against you for the second time.

Her fingers slide free of her hair and you slip up her body while she pants in recovery. You settle over her and hold her gaze while you slowly, gently, slip your fingers inside her; she gasps and tightens around you. You slow down, now, the back of your hand braced against your hipbone as you languidly match the gentle roll of her body.

"I love you," you whisper, as your forehead comes to rest against hers. "I just…"

"You're perfect," she whispers back.

You curl your fingers and she twitches, her arms wrapping around your shoulders and pressing into your shoulderblades. You do it again, and again, slowly, gently, and this time she dissolves against you rather than shatters, liquefying between your body and the floor.

Later, after she has mapped your body as thoroughly as you've mapped hers, you rest on top of her. You imagine making yourself small and crawling between her ribs, making your home alongside her beating heart.

"If I let you out of the ludus, would you flee to safety?" Myka asks.

"No," you sigh. "I have no connections or resources… I wouldn't last a day as a fugitive in the city."

"Could the penalty possibly be worse than what you're living now?"

You prop yourself up on your elbow to look at her. "It could." You trail a finger down her sweat-slicked cheek and neck. "You've done a horrible thing to me, Myka," you murmur, with a small smile.

Her eyes widen at you.

"You've made me want to live," you say.

She can only kiss you in response, so she does.

By the time the sun crests into early afternoon, she is back in her dress and you in your tunic.

"I'll find a way to get you out of here," she says softly to you. "Somehow."

You smile sadly at her, because you're sure there is no way; you've banked so much more than your share of good fortune following the crimes you've committed. But you are not cruel enough to deprive her of hope, so you nod in agreement.

"But don't come back here," you say. "For you to come here, it's—it's dangerous for both of us."

It's her turn to nod, this time.

She kisses you a last time before she leaves, chaste but lingering. After you part, you press your fingers to your lips, so the trace of her touch can't escape.

* * *

**a/n: both the chapter title and the sex scene brought to you courtesy of Massive Attack's "Paradise Circus" (in that I was listening to it on loop while writing this thing)**


	10. The Dagger

**TW: attempted (but averted) sexual assault, with some pretty bloody vengeance taken out on the assailant.**

**Also, see ch. 9 for notes on how I've retconned Artie. That will be a little more evident in this chapter, I think. Try to think of him as an OC rather than as the Artie we know and love. Apologies for that.**

* * *

You should never have accepted the gift of the dagger.

Right? Right.

It's clutched in your right hand. The sharp edges of the blade are painted in blood. Your left hand and forearm are covered with it. Your face is spattered.

None of it is yours.

You know, with this, that you have surely run out of chances.

Here's how it happened:

\\

It's the day that Myka visited you. You are sitting on the floor in Pete's cell when the gladiators file back in down the corridor after their training is done. Several of them catcall and crow at you as they pass the cell you're in; they make lewd jokes about how great you must be if Pete still isn't ready to share, they pound on and rattle the cell door, though they never open it. Theirs are no different from the insults and barbs the procurers at MacPherson's used to throw at you, but after your afternoon spent making yourself vulnerable, it's hard to remember how to make yourself hard again.

When Pete bolts into the cell, he is frantic and red-faced with rage.

"Tell me I was imagining seeing Myka up here," he growls, stepping to stand over you menacingly. "Tell me."

You stand and hold your hands up in front of you, defensively. "She was here, but—"

He interrupts you with a hand to your chest, pushing you back against the wall. "You better make this good: What. The hell. Was she doing here with you."

"She just came to talk to me, Pete," you say, swallowing the defensive edge that wants to creep into your voice. "I understand why you're reacting this way, but I promise, I wouldn't hurt her."

"Really? Really? You wouldn't hurt her? You expect me to believe that?" He slams his open palm against the wall, close enough to your head to make you flinch.

"Pete," you say, gently. "I swear it on my daughter's soul: the only injuries Myka had when she left here were the ones she had when she arrived."

He stares at you for a minute, eyes dark, nostrils flaring with every breath. He pounds the wall one more time before backing away and dropping onto his bench.

"She had injuries when she arrived?" he asks.

You nod. "Her… her father. I guess she tried to call off the wedding with MacPherson and her father wasn't pleased."

Pete shakes his head. "It's amazing how one person can screw up so many things."

You furrow your eyebrows. "Myka?" you ask.

He lets out a dry laugh and meets your eyes. "You," he says, like it should be obvious. "She understands that it's dangerous for her to be in here, right?"

You nod. "I made her promise not to come back."

"And she agreed?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Well, that's one thing you did right, at least."

You've withstood stiffer blows. You inhale deeply, and release it. It's not too late to work on becoming a better person, on managing your anger better.

Pete bends down to untie his laces, then stretches out along his bench, arms folded across his eyes. You sit down on the floor again, against the wall.

"Could I ask you a question?" you say, after awhile.

Pete chuckles. "Can I stop you?"

"You love her."

"That's not a question."

"Do you?"

Pete sighs. "Our relationship is complicated. I love her like family. Like a sister. I've known her for a very long time."

You fold your hands in front of you, thumbs rubbing against one another nervously.

"I love her too," you say, eventually.

"You've got a hell of a way of showing it."

"I wasn't in my right mind," you retort, and he responds with a harsh laugh. You take a deep breath and try again: "I was broken. Surely you can understand, in some way. Gladiators and brothel slaves aren't so different. We both know what it feels like to have our bodies reduced to objects bent to the whims of other people's pleasures."

"Yeah," Pete says, throwing his hands aggressively into the air above him. "I get that. So when someone like you threatens maybe the only person who makes me feel human, I'm going to get protective and I'm not going to apologize for it."

"I know that feeling, Pete," you say quietly. "Now, imagine losing that one person who made you feel human. Imagine what that would do to your mind."

He lies still for a long moment, breathing deeply. Then he rolls onto his side to face you, tucking both arms under his head. He squints at you across the cell.

"Okay," he says, his voice softer. "But I don't forgive you."

"I wouldn't ask you to. I don't forgive myself."

"But you love her."

"I do." You smirk a little at him. "Definitely not like a sister."

"Oh oh owwwwwwch," he groans, covering his upturned ear with his hand. "See, the thing with the whole 'like a sister' thing is that I really don't ever want to hear about that."

You laugh at that, and bite your lip. "You're a good man, Pete Lattimer."

"It's a thing I'm working on," he says.

There's another question you want to ask, but it unnerves you. You sip an intake of breath and hold it.

"What's on your mind?" he asks.

You let the air out. "You're Roman, aren't you."

"Yep," he says, nonchalantly, as he stretches his arms up and shifts back onto his back. "Born and raised here in Roma city, as were my parents and their parents."

"How did you…"

"End up here? A slave and a gladiator?"

"Yes." You cock your head toward him. "If you don't mind my asking."

"Ah, well," he sighs, "I guess I know most of your dirty secrets, don't I."

You shrug, and nod.

"Wine," he says.

You raise your eyebrows. "Wine?"

"I couldn't stop drinking it."

"I see," you say. You fold your hands in your lap and wait.

"I was in the army, a long time ago. Myka ever tell you about Sam?"

You smile, sadly, and envision a shelter in a clearing near a stream. You nod. "Yes."

"We were in the same regiment. That's how I met Myka, originally, was through him," Pete says. "But I thought back then I had a small problem with wine. Turned out it was a big problem. I couldn't sober up. I'd get sick if I tried. Eventually the army kicked me out because I couldn't function. Family gave up on me, too. I went into debt to keep myself in drink, and couldn't pay it back. After a year of defaulting, my creditor claimed me in slavery as repayment. "

One of the many bizarre Roman traditions: that they enslave one another. Fathers can sell their children. Lenders can claim their creditors.

As Pete speaks, his tone blurs, becomes more distant. You see his eyes lose focus as he calls up his memories.

"I started off with the high-ranking posts: tutoring, actuarial stuff, because of course I could read and write and I was good with numbers. But the drink still haunted me and I could never hold those positions for long.

"Couple of years passed and I kept getting downgraded, job to job. Found myself in one of the low-end marketplaces about to be sold with no guarantee. That's where people like Bering go to find gladiators: they choose from among the slaves thought to be expendable." He looks at you and you nod. You know that feeling.

"Myka was really into the fights back then," Pete continues. "Sometimes she would go with her pa to the sales. And I just—I got lucky, I guess, because she recognized me and convinced her father to pay whatever tiny sum they were asking for me. Brought me back here and she got Artie and the doctor to dry me out. With the army training, I made a damn good gladiator for them for about three years before my shoulder went to hell. And now I'm a trainer here."

"So Myka made you a gladiator," you say. The idea twists your gut—it seems so unlike her.

"Myka saved my life," he retorts, louder than necessary. He exhales, loudly. "Sorry. Touchy subject." He sits up and gazes at you steadily, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. When he opens his mouth again, his voice is the measure of soft control. "I don't want to be here any more than you do, or any of the other guys. But I'd rather be here than dead in an unmarked grave, which is where I would be if Myka hadn't taken a chance on me that I didn't really deserve. And you've gotten some good out of my story, too, because I'm the reason Myka's soft on slaves. She used to be as bad as everyone else, until I came along, a guy she used to hang out with as a friend who'd had a rough time and made some bad choices. She had to realize that we were people just like everyone else. And I'd lay everything down for her to this day, Helena, because she did the same for me."

Pete's words shake you and soothe you, they make you love Myka and fear for her all the more.

You open your mouth to respond to him when a knocking sound rattles through the wall you're leaning on—three loud raps. You glance back over your shoulder instinctively, as though you could see where the sound was coming from. Then you look at Pete and he shrugs, brow knit in confusion.

A moment pauses and you hear it again. Pete stands up.

Then you hear the voice, coming partly through the wall and partly through the door, echoing down the corridor: "Hey. _Hey._ You two having fun in there? I'm sure looking forward to when _I_ get to have fun. Didn't your parents teach you to share, Pete?"

"Can it, Diamond," Pete yells back.

"I'd love to, but you're hogging the goods."

Your eyes slip closed for a moment and you rub the back of your neck.

"Ignore him," Pete says, looking at you with what seems like true kindness for the first time. You try to smile back at him even as you struggle to tear your gaze fully from the wall behind you.

"Come on," Marcus yells again, "I've got a sharp spear that needs a polish and I know I'm not the only one in here who's waiting his turn for a shine!"

A chorus of voices roar out their approval from the cells down the corridor.

Pete shakes his head, angrily, and walks to his cell door. He tilts his head up toward the window there and shouts, "The next man to make a sound other than snoring will complete his full day of training tomorrow barefoot in the sun."

That silences them quickly. You smile a little, imagining just how hot the sand must get without shade.

Pete turns and looks at you. "I'm sorry," he says.

"It's hardly your fault," you reply. You're feeling a little shaky, there's no point in denying it. When you meet his gaze this time, there is a softness there that you've never seen before. For the first time, you're truly struck by the risk he's taking on your behalf, by protecting you.

When you lie down together to sleep, he says, "I'm not sure how much longer we're going to be able to sustain this."

You prop yourself up on your elbow and when you look down at him, he's just tired. Defeated. Oddly, you feel more upset on his behalf than on your own. You wish you could reassure him somehow, or thank him with more than words. For a vaporized moment you contemplate giving him, willfully, what you were sent here to have taken from you. But you don't want him, not that way, and while you bet he wouldn't mind sex, you're pretty sure he doesn't want _you_—and he's a good man, a kind man, who wouldn't take your offer of your body given under duress.

"I'm incredibly grateful for everything you've done for me, Pete," you say, instead. "Truly. There are no words for how grateful I am."

"Stay safe in here," he says. "That's all the thanks I need."

\\

The next evening, Pete returns early with his good shoulder blackened and swollen, patched up with bandages.

"What happened?" you ask.

"Marcus," Pete replies tightly, as he rolls his neck. "I'm officially a wingless bird."

"Pete—"

"Listen," he interrupts, "I can't sugar-coat this. Things are getting personal and I think Artie's going to interfere soon."

You close your mouth and nod. You'd figured as much.

"I know I said Artie doesn't believe in this whole thing, but he needs to keep the calm among his gladiators, especially with the big games at the Colosseum coming up in two weeks. It's his ass on the line if our fighters do badly. Mine, too, but I'm less concerned about—"

"Pete," you say, to interrupt his rambling. "It's all right. "

"Not really," he says, with a frustrated shake of his head as he sits down on his bench. "I got something for you, though. You don't have to take it, but…"

He reaches behind himself and begins to unroll the back of the waistband of his _subligaculum_. When he extends his hands in front of you again, he's holding a small dagger with a thick leather sheath, and a strip of cloth as long as your arm.

"I don't even know if this is a good idea," he says, "but I had to do something. Smuggled this out of the Armory."

For a long moment, you look at the dagger in his outstretched hand. Then you look at him.

You take it.

\\

The next morning, you use the cloth to strap the dagger to your inner thigh. Your tunic conceals it easily.

By the same time the following day, you will wonder whether it was miserable or wonderful fortune that inspired Pete to gift you the knife on the day that he did.

You are sweeping out a gladiator's cell as a favor to Leena when you hear heavy footsteps walking down the corridor. A man's footsteps. You don't know whose they are, but you flatten yourself against the inside wall of the cell in the hope that you won't be seen.

The steps continue past you.

Suddenly, the steps break into a run and you hear Marcus' voice yelling: "Hey, stop!"

And then you hear another set of footsteps, lighter, also running, followed by the sound of a scuffle and then—silence.

You don't know why Marcus isn't in the yard or who the other person is.

You could sit still. You could wait out whatever is happening-

But curiosity, impatience, and poor impulse control are your weaknesses. That, and while you're certain that Leena knows the gladiators' movements well enough to avoid them, you have a fear deep in your belly that the lighter footsteps you heard might have been hers.

Slowly, you open the door of the cell where you were hiding and you poke your head out.

There, between the doors a half-dozen cells down, Marcus has Claudia pinned to the wall.

\\

You duck back into the cell. Your heart is racing and stuttering like a chariot wheel over cobblestones and your hands tremble with nerves. Phrases of anger flash through your mind: _what is she doing here_ and _how did she get through the locked gate_ and _gods, Myka, keep track of your handmaiden!_ but you know two things:

This is about you, not Claudia.

You cannot—_will_ not—let Claudia suffer for your sins.

You take three calming breaths and cautiously tip your head out into the corridor. Claudia's head is turned to the side, against the wall, facing you, but her eyes are closed and Marcus is pressed fully against her. You can see that he's saying something, but he's speaking too quietly for you to hear, and she's flinching, her brow furrowed in fear.

You scan his body quickly. He has no weapons on him. He is a fighter who trains for hours every day and you are years out of practice, so he has a strong edge in skill, unquestionably. He is also easily twice your size. But you have a dagger and the element of surprise working in your favor—and those are substantial enough to be significant.

You bend down and unsheathe the dagger, rolling it in your grip.

Slowly, so slowly, you open the door and stalk close to them, one finger pressed across your lips in case Claudia opens her eyes and sees you. The distance to reach them is brief. Marcus turns his head and sees you just before you are upon him, the heel of your left hand immediately jabbing up at his nose where it collides with a sickening _crack_. Blood gushes out over your palm and down your forearm but Marcus stumbles back, freeing a whimpering Claudia from the wall. You notice that her clothing is undisturbed—_you made it in time, thank the gods_—but a gladiator requires more than a broken nose to be stopped; before he can recover, you grab a fistful of his hair to pull his head backward, pressing your dagger to his throat as you hook your heel behind his knee and _pull_. He tumbles backward to the ground like a fallen horse, head bouncing once off the stone floor. You land on top of him. It will be hard for you to immobilize a man of his size but you've got tricks; you press your thumb over the broken bridge of his nose and he howls. Then you release it but keep your hand there, your other hand pressing your blade to his throat just above the adam's apple. Your knee is pressed to his solar plexus and your other foot is braced on the floor.

"I've been trying to figure out what I needed to do to get you on top of me, baby," Marcus sneers at you through the blood still oozing down his face.

"You're a sick bastard."

He laughs once, then grimaces against the pain. "Maybe. But I'm given to understand that I'm a sick bastard who is also your master, along with every other man in here. I wouldn't have touched that kid if you'd been giving me my due instead of hiding out with Lattimer."

You press the edge of your blade harder into his throat. "When I kill you, you'll be nobody's master."

A soft sound comes to you from off to the side. You flit your eyes up and realize that Claudia is still standing there, terrified and dumbstruck. Her eyes are red and watery and her hands are both fisted in her hair as she watches the scene playing out before her.

Marcus notices your hesitation. "You won't kill me in front of the girl," he says, when you look down at him again.

He's right.

"_Claudia, go_," you say quietly, in your language, not lifting your eyes from Marcus' venomous gaze.

"_No way, HG. I'm not leaving you with him," _she responds, in hers.

"_It's not safe here. GO," _you growl, louder this time, as you press the edge of your knife hard enough to nick Marcus' skin.

"_HG—" _Claudia says. You hear her take a step closer to you. "_Don't—don't kill him. He's not worth the punishment you'll get." _

"_If you're still here when I'm found then you'll be blamed for this, too. Let me take the fall for whatever happens. There's not much more they can do to me." _

"_HG—"_

"_GO!" _you shout, angry now. "_If you want to help, go tell Myka what happened."_

"_Okay. Okay," _Claudia says, nervously. You hear her footsteps retreat slowly, and then faster.

"All right, whore," Marcus spits up at you. "Kill me or don't. I'm tired of lying here."

You stare at him, at his dark, broken eyes and the red blood spilling over his chin. A slave, like you, of course. From the east somewhere. Thracian, maybe.

"You like attacking defenseless young women," you say, bringing your face close to his.

"I should have attacked _you_," he says. "You're not defenseless." He spits and suddenly your face is flecked with his blood. "Kill me or let me up and you'll see how a gladiator fights through a broken nose."

You realize you don't want to give him the satisfaction of killing him. But he's right: if you get up right now, he'll come after you, broken nose and all.

"You're too low to die by my hand," you growl, and that's all the warning he gets: in four swift movements, your dagger leaves a long wound, just deep enough to scar, along the length of each cheekbone, and then it flies to each of his hands and slices through the thin skin between both thumbs and forefingers, all the way to the muscle.

He doesn't howl like most people would, but he grunts loudly and you know you've disabled him.

You stand and back away from his prone form as he clutches his hands into fists, and his fists against his face, blood pouring from all of his wounds.

The dagger is still clutched in your trembling hand.

\\

You should never have accepted the gift of the dagger.

You tell yourself this, over and over. The dagger made you feel you had the strength to interfere. You should have learned, by now, not to interfere; to keep your concerns to yourself and let others deal with theirs.

Even if those others are young Claudia.

Right? So you shouldn't have accepted the dagger.

You tell yourself this over and over but you can't bring yourself to believe it, even though you know, with every certainty, that you are out of chances now.

You had barely had time to wash the blood off when Artie came wondering why Marcus was taking so long in the latrine, only to find him crouched in the corridor, covered in blood, his thumbs all but dangling uselessly.

He found you in the bathing room, washing your hands.

You didn't resist when he took the dagger from you. He grabbed you by the wrist and led you to a vacant cell – the same one where you were with Myka, the day before.

"The Dominus will hear about this," he'd said, tiredly, as he locked the cell from the outside. "You've just taken one of his strongest gladiators out of commission for the big games at the Colosseum. And I really want you to not be my problem anymore."

You didn't respond. You had nothing to say. You still don't.

You sit on the bench, now, back straight, hands on your knees, and think of Myka.

Myka, who loves Claudia and will surely be grateful that you did what you did, even at the expense of her father's gladiator.

Myka, who has helped you to see that there remains something in this life worth living for.

Myka, who is surely your only hope for salvation now.

You wait.


	11. Quicksilver

**A/N: Sorry for the delay—no time to write over the holiday or the week leading up to it. We're cruising toward the end here: probably just one more chapter, plus epilogue. I've been toying with the idea of eventually writing a parallel fic or series of ficlets that tells Myka's side of this story. Let me know, I guess, if you think that's something you might like to read?**

**edit: fixed a bad typo that affected the meaning of a sentence. (This whole thing is full of typos. I DO proofread, I promise, but apparently I do it badly. I'll try to go through and fix the whole thing at some point.)**

**TW: violence.**

* * *

You shiver your way through the night in the cell without furs.

You aren't certain whether you sleep, but your mind travels deep into dark memories, indistinct as reflections in a pool.

You remember _the smell of the wooden beam, your cheek pressed against it, arms wrapped around _

_the pull of heavy rope at your wrists, your weight pulling down and the metal hook lifting up_

_the first lash of the whip, stinging from your right shoulder to your lower left floating rib_

_the second, parallel and just below_

_the third, across, left shoulder to right rib_

_wet feeling of blood where the wounds intersected_

_arms tight around the pillar like a lover_

_seventh, eighth, ninth and your throat opens and grunts escape_

_after twenty you can't count; the sounds from your throat are sobs and spattering red across the wall before you_

_the voice, the infernal voice: bitch, harlot, killer, murderous cunt_

_knees cracking against stone floor when your wrists are unhooked; sliding face-down to the ground, arms still tied around the post_

_racking sobs of pain after the door closes_

_growing pool of red around you_

_door opens again, minutes or days later; a bucket of cold water on your head and then a fist in your hair pulls you up, wooden splinters in your arms, wrists hooked up again_

_his face close to yours, fingers pressing your jaw: "beg for mercy"_

_you don't_

_but you scream, you scream, you scream as the whip cuts skin desperate to heal _

_you are bathed in your own blood_

"_beg," he says_

_you think of your daughter and you won't_

_you think of your daughter and this, this pain, this is punishment for failing to keep her safe_

_this pain is penance you deserve_

"_kill me," you whisper, after days of this_

"_you don't deserve that relief," he spits, eyes red and wild and wet_

_he pushes your head back, pours water down your parched throat_

"_my wife wanted to live and you killed her; you want to die, so you'll live"_

_the whip comes up again._

\\

You would have done the same to him, if you could have.

You are alike, MacPherson and you.

\\

In the morning, sun creeps through your window like a thief come to steal time—the minutes, seconds of your life, however much or little remains. The gladiators are released from their cells and they file down the corridor toward their dining area.

The sun climbs and you watch the box of light travel across your cell floor. Nobody brings you food. You aren't hungry, anyway.

You aren't cold, but you shiver. The air warms, and you shiver. You palm the bloody stains on your tunic, and you shiver.

\\

When the lock on your door rattles, the sunlight square has travelled halfway across your cell door. You look up, toward the sound, but your only movement is to pull your knees closer, to present your shins as a shield between your soft parts and the intruder.

Artie doesn't acknowledge you with his eyes before he steps out of the doorframe. A different man walks in – younger, thinner, taller. The same manservant who shackled you in the armory, the previous week.

He steps toward you, another set of manacles in his hand. Wordlessly, you offer him your wrists, and wordlessly, he takes them. These are of a different design than the shackles you wore before, which were typically used on gladiators. A single thin rod rests against the back of your wrists and passes through openings in the ends of two u-shaped cuffs. These manacles are sleek and shiny and in good repair.

You are leaving the ludus, then, because these cuffs are designed to be seen.

The manservant fits a padlock through the end of the rod and then clicks it shut, once.

You wait for the second click—the one that latches the tongue in place—but it never comes.

"Follow me, please," he says.

You fall into step behind him. Artie closes the cell door behind you. "Tell the Dominus not to send her back here," he says. "She's been nothing but trouble for my fighters."

You follow the servant down the corridor and through the gate, into the hallway that leads to the armory. There, he pauses, and turns to face you.

"I've been told by a friend that you can be trusted to follow me not to hurt anyone if I free your hands. Is that true?"

"A friend?" you ask.

"Is it true?" he repeats.

You search his eyes, only to find him searching yours in turn, his gaze open and full. "Yes," you say, finally.

He scrutinizes you for a moment longer, tilting his head slightly to the side, then nods. "You're not lying," he says. The unlatched padlock falls open in his hand and he slides the rod out of the cuffs.

Without explanation, he turns and continues to walk down the corridor. You fall into step behind him, again.

\\

You turn the corner into the armory and a body collides with yours.

It has red hair that tucks under your chin and arms wrap around your body tight as a vine to a tree.

You wrap your arms around her before you fully process that it's Claudia, before you feel the wet on your neck, before you register that she's shaking, before you process her muttering "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I just—I missed you, I thought it would be safe and I just wanted to _see_ you, and then he—and then he—"

She's inconsolable, body shuddering with sobs and you clutch her tighter to your chest, murmuring nothings into her ear, coaxing her to her knees with you and rocking her as you would rock your daughter.

"It's all right, Claudia, darling," you whisper. "I'm so terribly grateful that I got there when I did, and you weren't hurt." Suddenly you pull back, cupping her cheek in your palm and lifting her eyes to yours. "You weren't hurt, were you?"

She shakes her head, then looks down and to the side. She's blinking furiously and you realize how tired she looks. She is physically unhurt, but mentally frightened, fractured, and just for that—for the terrorized look in her eyes—you wish you _had_ killed him. Marcus. The beast of a man.

You squeeze her shoulder. "It means a lot to me that you wanted to visit me. Truly."

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and then looks up, blinking furiously to stop the tears.

"Domina Myka said she's going to be there, today. I think that means there's a limit to how bad things can get. Right?"

Your lips part and you press them back together. "Surely, darling," you say, smiling tightly, as though you believe it.

\\

The manservant pauses by the door to the ludus servants' bathing quarters, expecting to wait outside, but Claudia grabs him by the wrist and pulls him in behind her.

"It's fine," she says to you with a smile, "Steve here isn't the type to be distracted by, you know, breasts."

"Claudia!" Steve exclaims, ducking his head nervously.

"Relax, Steve, it's fine. _She_—" Claudia jabs a thumb in your direction—"likes them well enough for the both of you."

Steve's surprised gaze shifts to you. You smile at him, a little, and shrug. He smiles back.

You wash the rest of the dried blood from your skin. When you're done, Claudia helps to rub your skin with fragrant oil that leaves your skin glistening, and she weaves your hair into a tidy braid. Then she hands you a fresh tunic.

You're being _prepared_, which can only mean that you're going into the villa.

The tunic is, again, the kind that knots at the back of the neck, leaving the thick, rope-like scars of your back exposed.

Steve steps forward, holding the manacles in an outstretched hand. "I'm sorry," he says.

You extend your wrists toward him, but he shakes his head. "Behind your back. Dominus's orders."

The click of the lock triggers the pulses, the jolts that travel from your chest to your extremities and back, like lava trapped in a valley. Your fingers itch for a weapon and your heels itch for a warhorse and you feel yourself tense and ready for combat, ready to protect yourself at all cost.

For a moment you think of perfect Myka and feel anger. It's her fault that you've rediscovered this—the ability to care about what happens to you.

With your arms twisted awkwardly behind you, the bar of the shackle pressed to the small of your back, you follow Steve and Claudia out of the ludus and up an exterior stairway. With each step up you become less aware of your pounding pulse, your racing mind. You hear a faint rattling sound and realize it comes from the metal of your cuffs vibrating against the bar that joins them. Resolutely, you pull your wrists outward until the pieces are pulled too tight to rattle. The narrow cuffs dig into the hollows below your wristbones.

By the time you step into the villa, you have reduced your feeling to nothing but the metal, cold and bruising.

\\

The exedra at the back of the house is a space for gathering, for casual conversation among friends and guests.

Pete is the first person you see as you approach; the skin of his broad, muscular back has been oiled, like yours, and his hair is neatly combed across his forehead. Even the bandages on his injured shoulder are evenly wrapped and new enough not to be marked with the stains of blood from old injuries. You wonder if his injuries are the reason his wrists are cuffed in front of him, rather than behind, like you.

You smile tightly and nod, ever so slightly, in greeting as you fall into place beside him. He nods back at you, just barely, face inscrutable.

Before you, in the raised, arced space of the exedra, are two divans, padded and upholstered in orange silk; between them stands a small table with a plate of dates and olives and an expensive glass bottle of wine.

Myka reclines on one divan and, to your surprise, MacPherson in the other. Bering, the Dominus of the house, is nowhere to be seen.

Myka, in a blue, brocaded gown, eyes lined with kohl, has never looked more _Roman_ than she does as she reclines there, her teeth carefully peeling the sweet flesh of a dried date from its pit. You gaze at her for a long moment. A fleeting glimpse of green, filled with the warmth you hope she shares with only you, would reassure you, give you the strength to stand strong through whatever is about to happen. But her eyes remain fixed to the fruit between her fingers.

You close your eyes and call up the rusty image of your daughter's face.

Claudia slips into her position of deference behind Myka. Steve steps into the corresponding space behind MacPherson.

You find a crack in the tile floor and grab ahold of it with both of your eyes, a raft in the sea of silence that extends between the six people in this space.

MacPherson stands, eventually. He picks up an ornate walking stick—purely decorative; he needs no support in walking or standing—and walks toward you in slow, measured steps.

"When Warren sent word of your antics from yesterday, whore, I'll admit I was a little relieved." He pauses in front of you, briefly, and then begins to walk around you, like a python encircling its prey. "It seems your tendency to wreak violence and destruction comes from an endemic fault in your character, rather than merely my inability to restrain a belligerent slave."

You swallow and grit your teeth, but keep your eyes downcast.

"Still," MacPherson continues, "you are his slaves, so it was kind of him to invite me to oversee your punishment. With, of course, the support of his daughter, my beautiful fiancée."

You swallow hard, and try not to imagine his vile touch travelling Myka's skin.

He pauses behind you, not touching you, but standing close enough that you can feel his presence tingling against your skin.

"And you, gladiator," he continues, from over your shoulder. "When I gifted this-this murdering _hound_ to you and to your comrades, it was with the understanding that my loss and her punishment could be for your gain." One of his hands, cold and slightly sticky with olive brine, comes to rest suddenly on your shoulder. "Look, gladiator," he says quietly. Pause. "I said _look_," louder now, and you hear the soft clink of metal on metal as Pete turns and follows the order. MacPherson squeezes your shoulder muscle now, tightly, just at the base of your neck. "She's quite lovely, isn't she?" The hand slides down your shoulder, creeps along your arm, curves down your hip, and you bite back the rising bile in your throat.

You hazard a brief glance up toward Myka, who hasn't moved from her divan. She's looking at Pete, now, not you. You have never seen her look so impassive.

"But I understand, gladiator, that you refused to share her. I would certainly hope that you were simply keeping her… _services_ to yourself. But some of your kind have said you were _protecting _her." He steps back from you, now, granting you the tiniest reprieve of space. "Is that true? Were you protecting her?"

You glance up toward Pete and his jaw works fiercely, fists clenching in their bonds.

"Answer me, _servus!" _MacPherson yells, punctuating the word with a crack of his walking stick against the ground.

"I was trying to keep her safe with me, sir," Pete says.

From behind you, MacPherson chuckles. "Such misplaced nobility in a gladiator," he muses. "I don't know what you thought you were protecting her from. Venus knows the slut was as well-used as a poor farmer's plough-mule long before she came to this ludus."

You hear a sharp intake of breath and glance up again: it's Claudia, hands fisted tightly at her sides, teeth biting the inside of her lip in an expression of muted sadness and rage. You are unashamed of your sexual history which, by Roman standards, was prolific even before you were captured; the only parts you wish you could erase are the ones you never consented to, after you arrived in Rome. For a fleeting instant you wish you had taken an opportunity to talk to Claudia about sex; to encourage her to resist the Roman obsession with female virginity and so-called purity, to tell her to be the steward of her own intimate encounters.

Between you and Claudia, Myka sips at a goblet of wine, eyes trained on MacPherson.

"I'm going to give you an opportunity to correct your mistake," MacPherson says to Pete, as he steps around you, coming to stand in front of you again. "I wanted her punished and I'll give you the opportunity to do it right here, right now."

You keep your gaze fixed on the floor but you hear the soft clinking of chains, again, as Pete shifts on his feet.

"Go ahead," MacPherson says, stepping back.

You wait for the length of a heartbeat. Then another. And another.

"Come on, man!" MacPherson says loudly, his voice resonating through the atrium. "Here, I'll start the job for you—" and in the corner of your eye you barely catch the end of his cane as it comes up, and then down again, connecting with the soft backside of your knees. They buckle instantly and crash to the floor; you narrowly avoid pitching forward without the use of your hands to balance you.

Claudia whimpers again.

Myka has yet to acknowledge you, yet to even look at you as far as you can tell, and her distance is more than unnerving. Still, she can't possibly intend to force Claudia to watch whatever is about to happen.

"Domina, please, let your young handmaiden leave the room," you say softly, keeping your eyes downcast.

"Did you just speak out of turn to my betrothed?" MacPherson's open-handed slap connects with your face just beside your eye, and this time you can't help it, your shoulder collides hard with the paving stone.

"Get up, _servus_, I didn't say you could lie down," he growls. Slowly—your hands still bound behind your back—you manage to worm your way back up to a kneeling position.

"I said get up!" MacPherson yells, so, a little shakily, you stand.

You hear his footsteps as he crosses the floor in front of you and goes to stand near Pete.

"I'll up the ante for you, gladiator," he says, conspiratorially. "Punish her to my satisfaction, and I'll have you manumitted. I'll be your patron. I'll set you up with a small plot of land to farm, perhaps. Just think, gladiator. Your sons could be citizens."

You look up at Pete, now, to find him looking at you. Then he turns his gaze back to MacPherson.

"What is your satisfaction, sir?"

Your stomach drops.

MacPherson shrugs. "Dead, or close to it. You can choose your own method, as long as she suffers."

Pete sets his jaw. "And if I refuse?"

MacPherson's eyes widen, as though the possibility never occurred to him. "If you refuse—well." He lifts the handle of his cane and presses it against Pete's injured shoulder; Pete winces and pulls back slightly from the pressure. "If you refuse, I'll see to it you're demoted to fighting status for the coming games at the Colosseum. How long do you think you'll last in the arena with two bad shoulders?"

You glance at Myka, desperate for some kind of connection now, just a brief moment with her gaze in yours, but what you find is the sight of her selecting a plump olive from the tray on the table and bringing it to her lips.

Defeat, then.

Without her protection, this is doomed to end badly.

"Do it, Pete," you say quietly.

"She speaks out of turn again!" MacPherson says, with a laugh and a flourish in your direction. "Will you stand for that, gladiator?"

You clench your hands into fists. "Pete," you say again, looking up at him. "Do it. It's all right."

His dark eyes meet yours.

"I'm sure I'm doomed anyway," you say. "After all the risks you took for me, let me give you the gift of your freedom."

You imagine MacPherson haggling with a trader over the coin value of your Christina.

Pete's jaw clenches. He shifts his gaze from you to Myka, and then lifts his eyes to the middle distance, like a soldier standing in rank. "I'll take my chances in the arena, sir," he says.

MacPherson explodes. "Has everyone in this ludus gone stark-raving mad?" he yells, and then the cane connects with your legs and your shoulders in quick succession. You collapse hard to the ground, first to your knees and then flat on your face, the impact echoing through your skull.

Distantly, you hear a young woman's voice gasp "HG!"

"She murdered my _wife_," MacPherson cries. You feel his fist in your hair as he grabs ahold and pulls you back up to your knees, his frantic, angry, desperate eyes dropping down to meet yours

"You're right," you say before you can stop yourself.

"Of course I'm right!"

"Sir," you say, quietly. "I killed your wife for taking the person I loved from me. Now you want to kill me for taking the person you loved from you. And—I'm sorry. For what I did."

It's only as you say the words that you realize that you do, truly, mean them. What he's doing to you - you 'd do the same thing to him, if you could, for what he did to your daughter, and you'd do the same to anyone who might ever try to harm Myka.

But MacPherson only scowls at you, his hand coming up to land a back-handed blow across your jaw that topples you to your side, head bouncing once off the stone. "My wife was a _Roman_, you blithering cunt! A thousand of your ill-bred bastard pups wouldn't be worth the clippings of her fingernails!"

"James."

Finally, Myka's voice, trickling into your brain through the ringing in your ears.

MacPherson stands up and looses a well-aimed kick to your abdomen and without the ability to protect yourself with your arms you can do nothing but grit your teeth and curl around the blow.

"James!" Myka's voice is louder now. "That's enough!"

But MacPherson is moving like a man possessed; he grips the hem of your tunic and begins to tear it up the side of your leg.

"That's enough!" and Myka's hands grip his shoulders at the base of his neck; she bodily hauls him up and several steps away from you. "I won't let you do this," Myka says firmly, standing squarely opposite him, one palm pressed to his chest.

But MacPherson refuses to be quelled; his eyes flash like a bull's, caring not what their target may be, as long as they have one. "Of course you won't let me," he barks. His cane clatters to the floor and his hand flies to her throat and suddenly he has spun her around; he's pressing her to the wall, a hand at her neck and his body flush with hers. "You, who must be the only woman left in Rome too prudish to share a bed with her future husband a mere two weeks before the wedding night!"

You're a little dizzy from the blows to the head but not so much that you can't make out Myka's feet scrabbling for traction as MacPherson lifts her against the wall, or the sight of his free hand pulling at the shoulder strap of her gown—

the room swims a little but you can make out the sound of Claudia crying quietly in fear; you see Steve cross the room to wrap her in his arms—

you have no use of your arms but you scramble to your feet and run toward them at the same time that you hear the clanking of Pete's chains beside you—

you drop and _slide_, feet-first, toward your nemesis, trapping his ankles between yours and _pulling_ at the same time that you see Pete grab him by the shoulders and yank him away from Myka, who gasps against the wall—

and MacPherson spins and his eyes rest on you again and he dives at you, dropping to his knees and bringing his hands to your throat and pushing, _pushing_—

your heels scrape at the floor, desperate for traction, but you have no hands to fight him off—

Myka comes into view, looking down at you behind MacPherson's manic and furious grimace—

your mouth gapes, fish-like, desperate for air as darkness begins to creep in the edges of your vision and MacPherson's grip only tightens beneath his maddened eyes where too much white is visible—

Myka turns her back.

The darkness overwhelms.

\\

This isn't death.

You want it to be death, but this isn't death.

\\

Your eyes blink. Blink again. Open, closed, it makes no difference. You see nothing.

Your cheek is pressed to a cold stone floor.

The sound of dripping water echoes through the damp room, and it throbs painfully through your skull.

You test your wrists. They are no longer cuffed. You shift your legs and—those are chained, now. You pull a little, and they don't give. You're chained to something by the ankles, then.

Slowly, you flatten your palms to the ground near your head, and you press. Slowly, slowly, your shoulders, chest, head rise from the ground. You fumble your way into an awkward seated position, leaning sideways against a wall.

"Well well, look who's awake."

"Pete?" you say, squinting into the darkness.

"The one and only."

You hear the sound of chains dragging against the ground as he moves in his place.

"Is there—is there anyone else here?"

"No. Just you and me."

You rub your temples with your fingertips. "Where are we? How long was I unconscious?"

"A prisoners' cell. Still in the ludus, on the gladiators' side. And it's hard to tell from in here. About a day, I think."

Your eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. You are still wearing your tunic, and through the shadow you can make out dark stains in the fabric. Blood.

You run your hands over your torso, arms, legs. You are covered in bruises and tender places, but there aren't any cuts. The blood isn't yours, then.

"Why are we here?" you ask.

You hear chains sliding against the ground again, and make out distant movement in the shadows. "We're going to be executed at the Colosseum during the games coming up."

"Executed?" You feel like a fool, parroting his words, but at this point you aren't certain if you're awake or not.

"Yeah. You, me, and some hungry wild animals, probably."

It's ironic, perhaps, that execution was your goal, just a few short weeks ago; now, the thought is horrifying. Such a humiliating, pathetic death in front of an audience of thousands.

"Why?" you ask.

"For killing MacPherson," Pete says, sighing.

You shake your head slowly to clear it, but all that does is bring a new rush of throbbing pain. "Did we—did you—I don't remember killing…" your memories are quicksilver in your palm, constantly shifting and reforming under your touch.

"You didn't kill him. You were unconscious," Pete says, resignation in his tone. "And I didn't kill him, either."

Your eyes squeeze shut. "Then who—"

"Myka."

"What?"

Pete inhales sharply, then lets the air out slowly into the darkness.

"She stabbed him with that sword of hers, to save your life."

And now you're gallows-bound for it, and Pete is, too.

"She can't possibly plan to let us die for it," you say. "She—she wouldn't. She'll come for us."

"She's moved to Cosa, Helena. She's gone."

Your fingers clench, nails digging gouges into your palms. "Gone? Cosa?"

"Her father got home just after she killed MacPherson. She was kneeling over you, still holding that sword, all covered in blood, and she was just—she was frantic, Helena, I've never seen her like that. She was so afraid you were dead." Pete sighs. "But her father was mad. Really mad. And he didn't want his daughter branded a murderer. So as far as the city is concerned, you and I are the killers, and Myka has gone to live in Cosa with her sister to grieve the loss of her second fiancé. Claudia has gone with her, and that manservant has been threatened into secrecy."

You inhale. Exhale. Inhale again.

All of your pieces are trapped.


	12. After the Battle Comes Quiet

**A/N: Apparently I lied in the last chapter. Oops. There will be one more chapter after this, before the epilogue.**

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to give me such kind and thoughtful reviews in these past few chapters. This story has occupied a kind of obsessive part of my brain since I started it, so I'm really glad that other people are digging it so much.

Without daylight, time passes without measure.

You find that you doze off often and with little warning, sleeping for lengths of time that Pete tells you are irregular.

Waking brings forgetfulness of your dreams, but Pete tells you that you startle often in your sleep, mumbling names. Charles. Wolcott. Myka. Christina.

Periodically, the door opens and someone tosses you a plate of food and some water. The deposit happens so quickly that your eyes never have time to adjust to the light from the corridor, so you never know who delivers it. You're pretty sure it's not Leena. She would stop, talk to you.

When you're awake, you pass the time with Pete by sharing stories. You both tell them, but you tell them more often than he; you were much-beloved as a storyteller in your home village and had practice recalling many of those tales when you had Christina as an audience.

Pete tells you war stories, an amalgam of his own with the stories he's heard from others used to fill in the gaps where his memory fails. "I hate that there's so much I can't remember," he says, "but then I think of what I do remember… the battles, the blood, the dead innocents… and I wonder if maybe I'm the lucky one to have forgotten so much." He shakes his head. "It's a sad statement that you have to become a slave in this empire to learn to see that outsiders are, you know. People."

Your own stories are more fantastical. You tell him a story of a person who finds ways to visit different eras in time, much beloved by Charles and Wolcott when you first spun it over a campfire a decade earlier.

You spin a tale of a man who makes himself invisible to the human eye and then travels around avenging the people who have wronged him.

"Myka would love your stories," Pete says. "She always loved a good yarn."

Each of you has a bucket within reach of your bindings. You can't see through the dark, not really, but you develop the habit of turning away when the other needs to use theirs, creating an illusion of privacy.

These small decisions help you to remember that you haven't died; you aren't in the afterworld just yet.

/

You think it must be night when you hear a key worked into the lock on your cell door. There hasn't been any movement in the corridor from some time.

The door opens and you and Pete both raise your arms against the torchlight flooding through.

"You need to be quick about this, dear." Artie's voice. "We're not supposed to be in here."

"My goodness, the smell," says a female voice you haven't heard in a long time. It's the healer, Vanessa.

"Not our fault," Pete says tightly from behind his raised arms. "We don't like it either."

"Nobody has come to empty these buckets," you say.

"Well, that's the first thing, then. Artie, can you take these and dump them out?" Vanessa asks. Your eyes are beginning to adjust to the light, and you make out the shape of the tall, striking woman standing between you and Pete. She carries her medical bag in one hand. Behind her, the shorter, grouchier form of her husband throws his hands up haphazardly.

"Really? Really? I run this ludus, and you want me to dump out prisoners' waste-buckets?"

Vanessa throws a stern look over her shoulder at him, and then steps to kneel near Pete, alongside his injured shoulder. Artie groans again, but he picks up your bucket and Pete's and sets off down the corridor.

"Let's check your shoulder, shall we, Pete?" she asks, carefully untying the knot in the bandage and unwrapping it. Pete hisses a little when the cloth tugs at his injured skin. "It's healing well," she says. "Let me clean it up a little, and I've got something here I can put on it for the pain."

You watch in silence, still squinting a little against the light of her torch, propped in a wall sconce. Vanessa treats Pete's wound quietly, and then comes to you.

"We meet again," she says to you, with a slight twinkle in your eye. You shrug a little, but say nothing.

She has you lay down on the cell floor and she runs her hands over your abdomen and the broad, dark bruise left by MacPherson's foot. She presses gently, asks you to breathe in different ways. Then she has you sit up a little and watches how your eyes respond to light.

"You must have taken a good hit to the head," she says, finally. "There's not much I can do about that. The good news is that if you're doing okay now, then you're healing. You'll get better, not worse. Same thing for your stomach."

Something like anger fizzles up in you, and dies. Is she taunting you, promising that you'll heal when she surely knows you won't live long enough for that to happen?

You swallow. "Why are you doing this?" you ask, as she finishes coating your bruised back with a pain-relieving ointment that warms against your skin.

She begins to gather her tools back into her bag. "When I was a young woman, training to be a healer in Gaul," Vanessa says, "my teacher told me that my job was to care for the injured, the sick, and the elderly. My job was not to determine who was and was not worthy of care—my job was to care for all." She smiles and stands. "I heard you two needed care."

On her last words, Artie walks back into the cell, empty buckets in hand. He sets one next to you and the other next to Pete.

"How's it going, old man?" Pete asks, with a small smile. You've learned his tone well enough to recognize the sadness it tries to conceal.

"I'm doing all right, Pete," Artie responds, and you're surprised to here sadness there, too.

/

Time swims slowly by, treading toward your doom.

Eventually, you and Pete stop sharing stories.

Eventually, you stop talking at all.

/

You develop a loose sense of the days passing based on the traffic in the corridor outside your door.

You don't bother to count the days as they pass, though. There's no point. You don't know how long you were unconscious, or even how long you were imprisoned before you tuned your ears to the aural patterns. And without daylight and with your head injury, your sleep pattern follows its own rhythm.

It's been quiet for several hours, however, when you hear the lock rattle on your door.

Pete is snoring lightly on his side of the cell. The rattling of the lock continues.

It shouldn't take this long to open a simple padlock.

Seconds pass, and the rattling continues. Finally, you lean forward.

"Pete," you whisper. He doesn't stir.

"Pete," you try again, a little louder. Still no response. You trail your finger through the seam between the wall and the floor, gathering a pinch of eroded pebbles there. You flick them at his shin, just out of your reach.

His fighting instincts kick in and he jolts awake. "What?" he says.

"Listen."

Still, the lock is rattling. Pete shifts, sits up straighter.

"It's been making noise for a few minutes. I don't know—" you cut yourself off upon the sound of a soft "click." The lock is unlatched.

The door opens, and there, framed by the light like Apollo, is Leena.

You blink fiercely, willing your eyes to adjust to the glare. She has a bag slung over one shoulder and something you can't make out—something small—clutched in one hand.

"All right, kids," Leena says, "I hope you've packed your bags, because we're going on a trip."

You blink at her, then look over at Pete. You hold his surprised gaze for a minute, then look back at Leena, who has dropped to her knees by your feet, her bag in the center of the floor.

She takes the small padlock on one of your ankles into her hand and eyes it carefully.

"You have the key?" you ask, breathlessly.

Leena shakes her head. "I didn't have the key to your cell, either, but I have a few tricks that Claudia taught me, and I have this." She opens her hand to reveal, in her palm, an ornate hairpin.

You remember wondering how Claudia made it to the wrong side of the locked gate to the gladiators' area in the ludus.

You tip your head forward into your hands, elbows resting on your bent knees, as Leena works the hairpin into the opening of the padlock, twisting and jiggling the pieces gently.

"Do you have a place for us to go?" you ask. "Some kind of safehouse?"

She shakes her head, eyes still on the padlock of your left ankle. "Not exactly."

You sigh, keeping your eyes downcast. "You shouldn't put yourself at risk like this, then."

Leena pauses at her work to look at you, one hand coming to grip your shoulder. "For years, I've been waiting patiently for the right time," she says. "This is the right time."

"We won't last a day without a destination," you protest.

"She's right," Pete says, breaking the silence from his corner of the cell. "And, I mean, I'd really like to leave, but we're just prolonging the inevitable if we don't have a place to go."

"I said I didn't have a safehouse for us. I didn't say we didn't have a place to go," Leena says, returning to your padlock. With a _click_, it snaps open. She works the hairpin free and immediately goes to work on your other ankle. "This has been in the works for awhile," she says. "You two are one day away from being transferred over to the Colosseum, and probably two days from being fed to the lions. Steve got a message from Claudia a few days ago. It's time."

"How in the name of the gods did Steve get a message from Claudia?" you ask. "Isn't she with Myka—"

"—in Cosa?" Pete finishes for you, as he sits up straighter.

Leena nods. "They're in Cosa. But Claudia sent the message to Steve through the slaves' networks." She glances up at Pete. "I've never had enough above-ground access to be able to get into those networks. Helena either," she glances apologetically at you, "but you must have heard of them, Pete? This way of passing a message from slave to slave, sometimes even across cities, until it finds its intended recipient?"

Pete cocks his head. "Okay," he says, "yeah, I've heard of it. One person sends a message to another—something cryptic, something only those two will understand, so that the slaves passing the message along don't know what it means. Right?"

"Exactly," Leena says. "Except Steve doesn't know what the message means. I doubt Claudia did, either." Leena glances at you pointedly before looking back down at her work. "The message is originally from Domina Myka, and we think the intended recipient is you, Helena." With a final twist of her wrist, the lock on your second ankle springs open, and Leena looks up at you, smiling.

Something terrifying burns in the pit of your stomach. It's hot, and sharp, and spreading.

It feels an awful lot like hope.

"May I have that?" you ask, gesturing to the hairpin. Leena hands it to you and you crawl across the floor to kneel beside Pete. Your mind has always wrapped easily around mechanics, and you are suddenly invested in opening his cuffs as quickly as possible.

"What is the message?" you ask.

In your peripheral vision, Leena's eyes shift up and to the side, recalling her words carefully:

"_Beloved, I linger upon the memory of a marriage proposal, long ago. All that you need is here, and my father will know I approved it. When the time is right, come and find me. By moonlight and with good wisdom, you will remember the path." _

You furrow your brow even as the lock on Pete's left leg clicks open and you shift your attention to his right.

You ask Leena to repeat the message, which she does, word for word. Your eyes slide out of focus, carding through your memories of Myka as your hands work furiously at the padlock. _Beloved_—that _is_ you, right? Surely it is. But you have never proposed marriage to her, of course, and what is the gibberish about using wisdom to find a path—

You look up, first at Pete, then at Leena. The second padlock clicks open in your hand and you grin, broadly, at both of them.

"I have the plan," you say.

/

Once you have taken a moment to wipe the worst of the metal-stains from your ankles using a rag and spit, once you have pulled your fingers through your hair and tied it again into an innocuous braid, once you have brushed the dust from your clothes, you think maybe, maybe, you might be able to walk through the market street without being pegged for a person who has spent the last ten days sitting in a cell.

In her bag, Leena has brought an item of nobleman's clothing.

"Steve pinched this from the Dominus," she says, as she holds it up in front of Pete. "Put it on."

The tunic is too big around the waist for Pete, but Leena manages to pin the extra fabric behind his back using the hairpin, and then together you drape the toga overtop, careful to fully obscure the bandaging on his shoulder. Leena uses her fingers to comb his hair into a fashionable sweep across his forehead.

"There," she says. "Do you think you can play the nobleman for us, Roman?"

Pete smiles lopsidedly and puts on an affected upper-class accent. "I _do_ think that can be arranged, my good lady."

Leena shakes her head, grinning. "Not like that. Definitely not like that."

"Is my face still bruised?" you ask.

Leena touches your chin, tilts your face one way, then the next. "A little," she says, eventually, "but it's not bad." She shrugs. "The sight of a slave with a bruised face isn't exactly noteworthy."

You don't know why this makes you think of your daughter. You wonder where she is—if she's still in Roma. If she's been traded to Capua, or further. She could be in the far edges of Gaul by now. You wonder if anyone has dared bruise her perfect face. You wonder if she's even still alive.

You swallow hard. "Let's go," you say.

Pete shakes his head. "We need to get supplies, first. Can you get us into the store-room and the armory, Leena?"

"Yes," she says, but you raise your hands in front of you.

"_All that you need is here_, the message said. I think we should just go."

"Go where, exactly, Helena?" Pete asks, a hint of exasperation in his tone.

You take a sharp breath. "There's a campsite a few leagues north of the city. Sam built it when he was a boy. Myka took me there once. That's where she's meeting us."

"A campsite," Pete says, and exhales. "Okay. We _definitely_ need supplies."

"But the message said—"

"These messages sometimes get a little muddled and are easy to misunderstand, Helena," Leena says, resting a hand on your shoulder. "I agree with Pete on this."

You sigh and fight the urge to roll your eyes in frustration. Myka is somewhere waiting for you, and you want to leave as soon as possible. But they are united on this. "All right," you say.

The corridors of the ludus are deserted. Your heart pounds furiously as you creep past the cells of sleeping servants until you reach the supply room, which Leena unlocks with a key. Pete keeps watch in the doorway while you and Leena take three blankets and, in the center of each place a fur, an empty waterskin, and a small collection of staple foods. You push through the nervous shaking in your fingers as you knot the edges of the blankets in the center and each sling a bundle over your shoulders.

You slink carefully, quietly, to the armory. The corridor to the yard is touched with grey light. Coming up on sunrise, then.

By silent, mutual agreement, you bypass the racks of swords and spears—you can't carry those in the city without drawing attention—and gather around the small box of daggers. You pick one up and tie it, nervously, to your thigh. Pete does the same. Leena takes two.

"Take a bow and arrows, Pete," you whisper.

He shakes his head. "I'm no good with them."

"But I am, and if we're serious about supplies, then we need hunting tools and—"

"_What in Ares' name is going on here!_"

All three of you wheel around. You refrain from diving for the dagger at your thigh.

It's Artie, standing in the doorway.

"Artie," Pete says, stepping forward, slowly. "You can't—this isn't…" His hands open and close at his sides. "Nobody wants anyone to get hurt."

"If nobody's going to get hurt, then why, exactly, are you standing in a room full of weapons when you're supposed to be in a cell? Why the hell is she holding that knife like she wants to throw it at me?" He points an accusatory finger at Leena.

You glance over at her. Sure enough, she's gripping one of her daggers, blade pinched between thumb and forefinger, tensed and poised to throw.

"She's not going to throw that," Pete says. He turns his head toward her slightly, his hands outstretched, palms down, like he can contain the tension in the room beneath them. "Right, Leena? You're not going to throw that."

Leena glances at you and you bite your lip. The indecision burning through you is unfamiliar. You have nothing to lose, at this point, by hurting Artie—but you don't want to. You think of the sadness in his voice when he visited your cell and spoke to Pete.

Slowly, Leena relaxes, standing a little straighter and letting her knife hand fall to her side. You breathe deeply and turn your gaze back to the two men, standing opposite each other.

"We just want to leave," Pete's saying. "Start over somewhere else. I don't want to die for a crime I didn't commit."

Artie brings his hands to his face and rubs his eyes tiredly. "You understand that if you leave here, it's going to come down on me, right? I'll wind up in that cell you just left."

"You won't," you say, suddenly. _My father will know I approved it, _the message said.

"I _will_. That's the way things work here."

You shake your head. "Domina Myka has written to the Dominus. He will know the fault lies with her, and not with you."

Artie's eyes narrow. "How do you know that?" 

"She told me," you say, stepping forward.

"With all due respect, I don't have reason to put any faith in your word."

"I understand that." You step forward again. "I do. But surely you have no reason to mistrust Leena or Pete?" You're at Pete's shoulder now. In the edge of your vision he glances at you, then looks at Artie again, and nods.

"Just go back down toward the yard," Pete says quietly. "You never saw us here. Myka won't—she won't let you be hurt for this, just like she's trying to protect us."

Artie stands for a long time, eyes moving warily between you.

You have one more angle to try. "Your wife must have told you about me," you say.

"Told me what?" he asks angrily.

"My history. She helped to care for me when I first came here."

Artie's eyes harden and he crosses his arms over his chest. "You aren't the first slave to feel the whip, and you won't be the last."

"Did she tell you I had a child?" you press on. "She examined me; I'm sure she could tell. After I was captured—they forced me into prostitution, they gave me a daughter, they took her away. I got angry and lashed out and—the whipping I received was not a common whipping of a slave. Your wife knows that."

You run your hands nervously over your head, over the smooth rolls of your braid. "I have always tried to protect the people I love and I continue to be punished for it. And I am asking you to let us—let _me_—have this one, final opportunity to feel basic human dignity."

Artie's face remains resolutely impassive, but you see his hands squeeze tighter around his biceps.

You step closer to him. "Myka will not let you suffer for a crime you won't commit."

"She won't," Pete affirms. "You know that."

Artie drops his arms, then raises one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Go," he says. "Go now. Before I change my mind."

You gather your bundles and your small collection of weapons and flee the room as quickly as silence permits.

/

Your pulse pounds in your ears as your group files up the steps and out of the ludus. You find Steve waiting by the roadside. Day is just breaking, and the strangers you see are mostly slaves, preparing storefronts and stalls for what will undoubtedly be a busy day of tourists flocking in for the games. Few Romans are out at this early hour.

Your breath trembles, your hands tremble with it. With every passing second you expect to be tapped on the shoulder, tackled, bound and beaten and escorted back to your prison. You find yourself startling like a frightened cat at every unexpected sound.

You glance at Pete. He maintains his composure better than you, but you've come to know him well enough that you can recognize the slight flare of fear in his eyes.

Leena, who has never seen battle and never been hardened, somehow maintains composure better than any of you. She wraps an arm around you, squeezes your shoulder. "You're doing this," she says. "We're doing it. It's going to be okay."

You take a deep breath. "We need to go to the stables, and we need to somehow get them to give us Myka's two favorite horses," you say.

Leena, Pete, and Steve all look at you oddly.

"One is a bay named Athena," you say, "and the other is a dapple grey named Artemis."

Steve smiles broadly at you and snaps his fingers, recognition flaring in his eyes. "Wisdom and moonlight!" he says happily.

Leena rolls her eyes and nods, smiling, understanding. Pete just looks confused, but he doesn't say anything.

"I think I can get us the horses," Steve says. "Let's go."

Steve is well-acquainted with the location of the stables where you have only been once. He leads your band along the side of the building, then across the road and around the corner to the left. You and Leena fall into step behind Pete, one off of each of his shoulders, posing as his maidservants. Pete's carriage and stride is normally imposing, molded by his gladiatorial training and the need to intimidate his opponents, but he slouches a little as he walks, now, shrinking himself, effectively making himself a less-memorable figure. It's smart, you think.

Leena, Pete and you wait outside the stable while Steve wanders inside to find a stablehand. A few short moments later he emerges, striding purposefully up to Pete and greeting him with a short bow.

"The horses you requested are being prepared, Dominus," he says, eyes sparkling.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Pete bite the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh. "Very good, servus," he says, and then coughs for an unnecessarily long time into his fist.

(Later, you will ask Steve what he told the stablehands. He will explain that he had introduced Pete as a suitor for Myka, travelling to Cosa to escort her back to Roma for the games, and bringing her horses along at her father's request. Because the stablehand knew Steve as the Dominus' manservant, he never questioned his motivation.)

Steve boosts Pete onto Athena's back, and you and Leena tie your various bundles to Artemis's tack.

"The north gate," you say, and your patchwork band sets off, slowly, through the gradually lightening and filling streets of the city. Slaves rarely ride, so you lead Artemis by the head while Leena and Steve walk alongside Pete, servile.

Your breath, your heart, your soul freeze up as you approach the gate. It's daylight now, and traffic at the gate is crowded and busy with the ins and outs of tourists coming for the games and merchants seeking to profit from them.

You brace yourself for the cries from the sentries: _Stop! You, band of miscreants! You do not have the freedom to leave the city!"_

But as you cross the threshold, eyes downcast and body demure, the cry never comes.

You follow the road to the north, weaving between travelers, and still nobody stops you.

And then you're out of sight of the city, and you start to think maybe—maybe—maybe this is going to work.

A half a league beyond the city gates, you pause by the side of the road to redistribute the horses' loads so that all four of you can ride. You settle behind Pete on Athena's broad back; Leena and Steve ride Artemis. You're moving faster, now—not as fast as the time you travelled with Myka, but the horses are carrying far more weight and you're all invested in not over-exerting them so early on. So long as you are not captured, you will need horses tomorrow, and the next day.

The hours of travel pass in slightly-strained silence. Every shift in the grass, every change in the wind feels like a threat. You imagine the Dominus behind every tree. You imagine MacPherson behind every bend in the road and wish, somewhat morbidly, that you had seen him dead; that you could make yourself understand, and truly believe, that he can never again hurt someone you love.

When the sun is high in the sky, you come upon a familiar-seeming leftward bend in the road, and you tell Pete to keep the horse to the right.

You look up, along the lower edges of the canopy, looking for the trunk with the scar from the fallen branch.

"Let her have her head," you say to Pete. Without question he lets the reins slide through his fingers and Athena stretches her neck down toward the ground.

"There!" you say, when you spot the tree; the horse confirms it by stepping intuitively off the road and onto the barely-worn, barely-visible path.

"Here?" Pete says, incredulous.

"Are you sure?" Steve says, from Artemis' back, behind you.

"I'm sure," you say. "Leave your reins loose, Pete. The horse knows this path far better than I do."

Long minutes tick by as you duck low on the horse's back to avoid branches. Athena picks her way carefully along, stepping over roots and rocks. You begin to wonder if you've made a mistake—this part of the trip was long, last time, but was it _this _long? Your eyes skip along the tree trunks and you begin to wonder if you're going in circles—yes, surely you've seen that tree before, surely you're lost in the endless woods—

And then light gasps through the trees ahead of you. Your eyes reach for it in manic desperation over Pete's shoulder.

Finally, finally, you emerge into the clearing.

"Ha!" you hear Pete laugh, a loud, relieved, amused sound. "Look at this!"

You slide from Athena's back while she's still moving and you run the short distance to Sam's shelter. Beside it, someone has pitched two small canvas army tents.

"Myka!" you call out as you sprint. "Myka!"

You duck your head into the shelter, and each tent in sequence. They are filled with supplies: you see sleeping furs, firestarters, another tent folded up, some bags of what looks like flour, water-skins, clothing, knives, thin rope for snares—everything you could need to survive in the wild for many weeks.

Myka, however, is nowhere to be found.

In the last tent you find a note, carefully written on parchment and laid on top of the pile of supplies. You recognize the Latin script, but you do not know how to read it. In fact, you despise writing, in general. Your own language has never used it. In Rome, your experience with the written word has been limited to records of slave sales, of brothel transactions, of gladiatorial fights. If these transactions happened in conversation, you think, it would be harder for the masters to pretend that slaves were less than human.

Nothing good has ever come to you in writing.

You crawl out of the tent, clutching the parchment, and you stumble to the center of the clearing, turning in desperate circles. You gaze into the woods in all directions, one hand shielding your eyes from the sun's glare.

She's setting snares somewhere, you think. Or she's bathing in the creek. Or she's hunting.

_Please_, you whisper into the ether. _Please, please, please. _

"Helena." You don't hear it, the first time.

"Helena," Leena says again, bringing her hands to your shoulders to stop your desperate searching. "Breathe, Helena. What have you got there? What have you found?"

Her hands are on your jaw and you center yourself on her kind eyes.

"Can you read Latin?" you ask. The parchment makes a crackling noise, like burning, when you hold it out to her with a trembling hand.

She takes the note from you and looks at it, brow furrowed. "I… only a little. Not enough for this."

Her eyes come back up to yours, and she offers you a hand. "Come on," she says, "Pete will read it."

You slip your hand into hers and she smiles at you, carefully, before leading you back to the tents, where Pete and Steve are unloading the horses.


	13. All of Me

**Well, I hope you forgive me for this, the final chapter.**

* * *

Pete, infuriatingly, reads the whole letter in his head before he begins to read it aloud. You watch his brow furrow more and more deeply as he approaches the bottom of the page.

"Come on, man!" you finally exclaim.

Pete scowls at you a little, but he clears his throat:

_Hello my friends,_

_I hope to be back here before you arrive, but if you're reading this, then either you fled more quickly than I expected, or my last errand is taking longer than I am hoping it will. Please know that whichever of these is true, I am working as hard as I can to return as quickly as possible. _

_However, my final errand is not without risk. There is a chance that I may be caught up, and it may take me too long to return to you. Or I may not be able to return at all._

_With that in mind, I ask you not to wait too long for me. A day, maybe two, at most. You must take advantage of the chaos surrounding the events at the Colosseum. My father will be too busy to come after you, and you must be far away by the time he is free to make the chase if he is so inclined._

_I must also tell you that this is where my plan ends. I hope that when we meet here again, we can decide, together, where to go next._

_I don't know for certain who you are, but if you found this place and are reading this note, one of you is most likely the brother of my heart and another is the keeper of it. Keep yourselves safe, I beg you. I can't bear the thought of you suffering any more on my account than you already have._

_With love,_

_Your patron_

Your heart pounds in your chest with a ferocity that echoes like a war-drum in your ear. Your throat runs dry, and you struggle to swallow to wet it again.

"I won't leave without her," you say.

Leena grips your hand tighter. You had forgotten she was holding it. "If you must, you will," she says.

You shake your head and then stop, wincing; one hand comes up to fight the slight throbbing that still chases you.

"You will," Leena repeats, "if you have to. She would want you to."

You know you won't. You can't endure another beloved unknown loose in the world. You can't tolerate the idea of not knowing if she's ill or well, alive or dead, happy or suffering. Your traitorous subconscious conjures an image of a sickly Myka confronting illness alone.

No. You will not allow that to happen.

"Well," Steve says, breaking the strained quiet, "I'm starving. Let's see what we can do about making some food?"

"Food!" Pete says, a little too loudly. "I could _definitely_ go for some food right now. Yes. Food."

/

It's the first time in weeks you've broken bread in company, and it isn't until now, sitting around the small fire, that you realize how you'd missed it.

(You and Pete had a brief discussion about the fire and agreed that given your distance from the road and the likelihood that the countryside was probably dotted by the campfires of travellers headed to Rome, you would probably be safe.)

Before dinner, you took Steve into the woods to set snares to hopefully get a rabbit or two for the following day's meals, but you brought the bow just in case. Sure enough, you stumbled across a small flock of wild partridge. You only managed to get one—a small portion to share between four people—but still, it was fresh meat to accompany the salted foods you brought from the ludus. And tomorrow, there will hopefully be rabbit.

Pete found green and dry wood and a tree weeping enough pitch to make two torches for the night.

You share the meal in comfortable silence. As you sit together afterward, enjoying the fire as the night cools, Steve is the one to finally speak.

"So… What's our plan?" he asks softly, running his hands up and down his shins where he sits on the ground.

Pete and Leena give their responses. You can hear all of their voices talking. You focus on none of them. You want to hear nothing of what they have to say.

You will not leave here without Myka.

/

The four of you agree, without speaking, that you need to keep a rotating overnight watch, in part for Myka but more for search parties seeking bounty for recovering escaped slaves.

You offer to keep the first shift. You won't sleep, anyway.

Leena says she'll gladly take the second if you wake her when the time comes.

Steve and Pete share one tent, and you and Leena will share the other. It feels oddly strange not to share sleeping space with Pete, given how accustomed you've become to his snoring and how many nights you have already shared a fur. But Steve and Leena barely know each other, so you need no encouragement to spare them that awkwardness.

There is a third tent you could pitch, and Sam's shelter stands ready for use, but by unspoken agreement, none of you wishes to sleep alone.

Over the dying embers of the fire, you hear the calls of the night-birds and gaze up at Orion, his club and shield raised against the charging bull.

/

You wake from light and fitful sleep to the sound of fire and the smell of meat.

"I went and checked your snares when the sun came up," Leena says, when you crawl out of the tent. "Good job in placing those!"

Pete crawls out of his tent shortly after you do. "Smells like meat!" he says, smacking his lips a little. Steve, with a little shake of his head, crawls out after him.

This holding pattern, you soon learn, is unpleasant only insofar as it makes things difficult to plan. After breakfast, you all decide to bathe. You and Leena go first; you follow the creek upstream until you find a pool deep enough. You scour your skin with fine sand from the riverbed and work the knots from your hair with your fingers.

When you return to camp, Steve and Pete have pulled all of the supplies from one of the tents and are taking stock of what they've found.

"If it ends up being the four of us and two horses, we may not be able to carry all of this," Pete says. He avoids your gaze. "We need to think about what we'll take and what we'll leave if… if it comes to that."

You set your jaw and bite the inside of your lip.

"We were both thinking we should leave in the morning," Steve says. "Head north."

Your gaze flits from him to a nodding Leena, and then away, into blue sky. You walk to the other tent and pick up the bow and arrows resting there, as well as one of the daggers and an empty sack.

"I'm going to go see what I can find that's edible," you say.

You cross the creek and wander as deep into the woods as you dare. Eventually, you find what you're actually seeking: a long, straight branch, about an inch and a half in diameter. You use the dagger to cut it off the tree and strip it of its smaller off-shoots, and then trim it to stand slightly taller than you.

You find a small gap between some trees and drop your tools on its edge. One tree, tall, majestic, faces you.

You tilt your head to it, once, in recognition, and begin to tackle it with your staff, stepping through the practiced motions your father taught you when you were a girl. The tree hits back in the resounding echoes of your staff hitting its trunk, vibrations rattling through your palms, vibrating through you.

You will not leave without Myka.

Minutes pass, an hour, maybe more. Sweat drips down your spine, off your chin, between your breasts. Your palms and fingers will be blistered the next day, you can feel it.

You notice, absently, that your head does not spin. Maybe it's finally close to healed. Maybe.

When you pick up your gear again to begin your hunt in earnest, you bring the staff with you. You like its weight, and if you strip it of its bark and find a way to create a blade for it, you could turn it into a usable spear.

When you return to camp, sometime later, you have bathed again and are carrying two more partridges and a bag full of edible greens. The supplies have been sorted into two piles—one to take and one to leave, you surmise. For a fleeting moment, you contemplate investigating their decisions, seeing if you agree with them.

But like most fleeting moments, it flees.

/

As darkness approaches again, you stretch out alongside Leena in the furs of your tent. Steve has taken the first watch outside, and you can already hear Pete asleep in the next tent.

"She wouldn't want you to put yourself in danger," Leena says, quietly.

She's right, you know. But for once, maybe, this can be about what _you_ want.

/

The most surprising thing, at first, about being awoken by Steve is the fact that you somehow fell asleep at all.

"Leena, Helena," he whispers. "Come out here. I'm going to get Pete." He drops the tent flap.

It takes a few seconds for you to rub your eyes into wakefulness before you realize what his actions must mean.

"Leena," you whisper, even as she is already sitting up alongside you.

"I know," she murmurs. "Let's go."

You have kept the bow and arrows in the tent and you grab them, stomach knotting in mixed terror and hope, as you crawl out of the tent.

The embers of your dinner fire still glow faintly, so you can't have been asleep long. You glance around the clearing but see nothing out of the ordinary.

"Look. There." Steve has reappeared beside you, Pete on the far side of him. He points in the direction of the pathway that leads back to the road. "Keep watching," he says.

You do, and for many long seconds, you see nothing. And then—

Light.

Someone is coming up the path with a torch.

"We need a torch of our own," Pete says, "I'll go get—"

"_No_," you say, more harshly than you intended.

Pete's head whips toward you. "Look," he says, "If that light isn't a friendly, then we need our space lit so we can figure out how to face them."

"If that light isn't a 'friendly,' as you say, we'll be able to tell by the way it moves up that path in the dark," you whisper. "Only Myka knows the way. And if it isn't friendly, then we're better off with the advantage of darkness."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Steve says.

"I agree." Leena.

Pete sighs. "Okay." He shifts a little, foot to foot. When you look over at him you realize he's clutching a dagger. You glance to your right. Leena has one, too.

You take an arrow, nest it against your bowstring, and wait.

/

For awhile, the light comes in and out of sight behind trees.

After some minutes, it steadies as it approaches.

Once it steadies, it remains even, growing as it approaches you, bold as a wishing star.

"It's Myka," you say breathlessly, a grin splitting your face. "It's Myka." You drop the bow and arrow by your feet and begin to walk, then jog, then run across the clearing.

You stop in the center of the grass just as Myka emerges from the darkness, on foot, holding a torch in one hand and leading a large grey horse with the other.

"They're here, Claud!" Myka exclaims. "They're here!"

You want to run to her, to leap into her arms and wrap your legs around her waist like a child, to cling to her with everything you have, but your feet feel like lead weights and your body trembles with such ferocity you fear you'll trip over yourself if you move. So you stand, and you wait, and you smile as Myka leads her grey into the clearing and a second horse emerges from the woods behind her, a smiling redhead perched proudly on its back.

"H.G!" Claudia exclaims, raising a hand to wave at you. "H.G., we have, umm—"

She twists a little to look behind her, and you notice she's got something tied around her waist. You can hear her speaking, but her voice is quiet and muffled, turned away from you.

Myka has almost reached you now, but for some reason—some unexplainable, visceral reason—you can't tear your gaze from Claudia.

That's when you realize that there's nothing tied around her waist. Those are _hands_, small hands, clinging to the fabric of her tunic, and—

It can't be.

It _can't_ be.

You are sprinting before you know you're moving. You don't feel the ground underfoot, you don't see the stars above. You reach the side of Claudia's horse as Claudia twists, just a little, and reaches behind herself to help deliver your daughter off the back of the horse and into your outstretched arms.

As soon as you've got her you crumble to your knees, clutching her to your chest, rocking her, unable to calm your racing heart.

"_Mummy_?" she says quietly, in your language. She seems uncertain, like she isn't sure if that's the right thing to call you anymore, or if you're even still that person.

You pull back just enough to look at her, at her perfect face, to run your hand over her black hair, longer than it used to be. "_Of course, my darling_," you say softly. "_I'm here._"

She sniffs twice then she bursts into tears—the sobs of a five-year-old who is confused and relieved and frightened and so very, very tired. You cling to her, resting her weight on your bent knees and cradling her head in the hollow of your neck. Her fingers burrow into your clothing and her tears trail hotly down your shoulder and chest as you rock her, murmuring soothing nothings. Claudia and Myka had bundled her in a blanket and you reach behind her to pick it up where it fell into the grass; you tuck it around her, cocooning her into you. Your heart has melted in your chest, it flows out into your fingers and pulses into your toes and you waver between nausea and giddiness and the desire to burst into tears yourself, held in check only because you know it would frighten her more than she already is.

Somewhere behind you, Claudia is launching herself at Leena and Steve and Pete is lifting Myka into a hug that spins her around. The two new horses are being brought to stand with Athena and Artemis where you moved them earlier that day, in an area of tall grass where they can feed. You see none of it.

For the moment, your universe is held tight within the circle of your arms. Nothing else exists.

/

You stay there with Christina until she cries herself out, sobs giving way to gentler whimpers and then to hiccups. Your lips, resting gently against her forehead, hum tuneless melodies, whisper meaningless sounds of comfort. When she quiets fully, you wipe the tears from her cheeks with your thumb.

"_Shall we go to sleep, now, my darling?" _you ask softly. She nods wordlessly against your chest.

You rest her head on your shoulder and wrap her legs around your waist, blanket still wrapped over her shoulders.

"_Hold on to me, love_," you say, and she grips the back of your neck. You stand carefully and begin to pick your way across the grass.

Myka and Steve sit on the ground near the fire pit, which has gone cold, now. Pete, Leena, and Claudia are nowhere to be seen: you assume they have gone to sleep. Claudia, you surmise, must have taken your spot in the tent with Leena.

Steve catches your eye as you walk by, then quickly looks away. Myka catches your eye, too, but you can't process that—can't process _her_—right now, not when your daughter is in your arms, breath puffing against your neck as she dozes.

You step to Sam's shelter and crawl inside it, wrapping Christina snugly in the blanket before laying her down on the soft grass.

"Mummy," she says sleepily, in Latin this time, as you tuck her in, "Can we go home tomorrow?"

You smile down at her. "We're going to make a new home, my baby. A better one."

"Mmm," is all she replies, drowsily, before she rolls onto her side, presses her thumb into her mouth, and surrenders completely to sleep.

You kneel there, watching the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. You should go and get a fur for yourself, to sleep here with her, you know. You should, gods, you should go and greet Myka. But you can't bring yourself to move, to have your daughter out of your sight, even for a moment.

So you kneel over her until your knees begin to ache a little, until the bumps of the dirt begin to press sharply into the soft flesh below your kneecaps, until you see her face begin to twitch a little in dreams.

"Knock, knock."

You startle fiercely, whipping your head around while dropping a protective hand to Christina's ankle.

It's only Myka, of course, crouched by the opening of the tent, a pile of furs clutched to her chest.

"It's chilly," she says, "I thought you might want these." She crawls into the shelter on three limbs, clutching the furs with one arm, until she can come to kneel beside you, just a little bit off to the side, without touching.

"I… yes. Thank you," you say, eyes resting on the pile of warm blankets she has placed on the floor between you.

Silence floods your space. You have so many things to say to her. A mountain of truths so tall, you can't figure out where to begin to scale it.

Myka rescues you, yet again, by speaking first.

"I hope you can forgive me for what I let MacPherson do to you in the villa," she says softly.

You can't tear your eyes from your daughter but you feel your eyebrows crawl up your forehead—_really? That, of all things, is what she wants to bring up?_

"I was so close to finding Christina," Myka continues, shaking her head. "I knew the trader had sold her to a small textile manufacturer on the south side of the city, but I had to go there and see if they still had her. And I was terrified of upsetting that balance, of doing something that would expose my true loyalties to James or to my father and would keep me from finishing the task—"

You have kept yourself together until now, until this very moment, when your melted heart heaves itself up inside your chest and bursts free in the form of a wrenching, wracking, soundless sob that doubles you over in this cramped space.

"Helena," Myka murmurs, reaching a hand out to you.

Your face drips with tears and your nose is running but you don't care, you grasp her outstretched hand in both of yours and press your lips to her open palm, long and gentle, against the calluses.

"Myka," you whisper shakily against her skin, "I would endure that afternoon in the villa and all the nights in the cell a hundred times over for what you have given me." You drop your forehead to the place your lips have just left and you are bowing low to her, bending to her hand, you realize this but you don't care.

"I could live a thousand lifetimes in service to you and never repay you for this," you say, and you see your tears leaving dark marks on the cloth of her dress, over her knees.

You hear a small, sad laugh escape above you and you look up, cradling her hand against your cheek. Her mouth moves soundlessly, like she can't find her words. "No more servitude, Helena," she murmurs, eventually. "Isn't that what all of this has been about?"

Her eyes are wide and glistening and you feel her thumb stroke your cheekbone where the bruise has faded to pale yellow-green. You know your tears must be working their way into the creases of her fingers.

She smiles at you, wetly, and you surge up to her, dropping her hand to capture her face between your palms so you can kiss her, long and firm but chaste with your daughter a foot away. She can taste your tears and more, you're certain, but her hands cup your jaw, cradling you close.

When your lips finally part, you drop your head to her shoulder, clutching her upper arms.

"You must be exhausted," you murmur.

She laughs softly into your hair. "More than I've ever been."

You sit up and begin to unfold the furs she has brought. You lay one out on the floor and gently shift Christina so that she lies along one edge of it. Then you crawl on, alongside her, and hold a hand out for Myka, who follows you, pulling the other blanket with her and draping it over the three of you.

When Somnus visits you that night, he leaves your lips pressed to Christina's hair and Myka's body wrapped around your back, the fingers of your free hand tangled with hers below your breast, in short reach of your beating heart.

/

You wake up to the feeling of a five-year-old burrowing into your side.

"Good morning, darling," you whisper. On your other side, Myka has rolled onto her back. You can hear her breathing still even and deep with sleep.

"'Morning," Christina whispers back. She sniffs, then: "I have to pee."

You chuckle a little, as quietly as you can, as you squeeze her closer and drop a small kiss to the top of her head. "Of course, dearest. Let's go."

Heavy blankets are pushed back and she untangles herself from the lighter blanket wrapped around her underneath. You try your best to avoid disturbing Myka, but as you turn to gather Christina you see your love blinking up at you, sleepily, fondly. You smile back at her, pausing to reach down and cup her cheek.

You have never seen her like this, raw and tender, newly awake and not yet put-together, wiping sand from her eyes.

For the briefest moment, you fantasize about a hundred other ways you hope to watch her wake up. You blink those thoughts away.

"We'll be back," you murmur, "the little one needs the latrine. Or a patch of moss behind a tree, as the situation requires."

She smiles back at you, sleepily, and turns her head to kiss your palm. "Go."

You lead Christina into the trees and help her to balance while she goes. A quick once-over reveals blessedly few marks of abuse on her body. Her fingertips are callused, and someone has clearly seen fit to take a switch to her behind once or twice (rage bubbles up when you see the faint marks, but you swallow it down—she's here, now, with you, and you _will_ die before you let anyone hurt her again). You have seen much worse on slave children her age.

You notice, also, that she can wiggle two of her teeth with her tongue, and something about the sight makes warmth bloom through your stomach.

Christina clings to your hand and walks close to your leg as you venture back to the campsite. Pete is awake and stacking wood in the fire pit, and Myka stands next to him, twisting her body from side to side and then stretching her neck one way, then the other.

"I've never slept on the ground before." Myka smiles at you, as you approach. She presses her fingers into her shoulder muscles. "It's… wow. Different."

"It does take some getting used to," you say.

Myka looks down at Christina, who is looking wide-eyed up at her from where she's pressed against your leg.

"Good morning, Christina," Myka says, with a soft smile.

"Hi," Christina says quietly, through her fingers.

Pete has set the tinder alight and he stands up now, wiping his hands against one another. "Well," he says, turning to you and smiling down at Christina, "Do I get to meet the little miss?" He crouches down to her level.

Christina steps shyly behind your leg, one hand gripping yours, fingers of the other hand caught between her teeth as she peeks around your body.

"Christina, this is Pete," you say. "Pete is a very dear friend. Can you say hello?"

She burrows her face into the back of your hip.

"Come now, surely you can just say hello for me?" You crouch down and coax her out from behind you. She releases the fingers from her teeth and waves quickly in Pete's direction before hiding her face in your neck.

Pete lets out a loud guffaw and waves back, and you laugh with him. "Shy," you say. "She didn't used to be, but…" you shrug as nonchalantly as you can manage.

You'll never know what she's been through in these past months, not really.

Your interior monologue breaks when Claudia crawls out of her tent. Christina immediately drops your hand and dashes to her, arms outstretched.

"Hey, you little monkey!" Claudia smiles and scoops her up, spinning her around once before bringing her to rest on her hip. "Sleep well?"

"Yeah," Christina giggles and then throws her arms around Claudia's neck.

"I've got to tell you, H.G., your kid is kind of ridiculously adorable," she says, as she walks toward the fire. "Heavy, though. You're a little too big to be carried around like this, kiddo."

"What's Claudia got that I ain't got?" Pete asks, crossing his arms with an exaggerated frown.

Myka steps closer to you and slips her arm around your waist. You press close to her, side-to-side, and let your head drop onto her shoulder. Claudia is trying to introduce Christina to Leena, who receives the same shy response that Pete did.

"Claud was amazing with her yesterday," Myka says quietly. "I'm so glad she was with me."

In this moment, as the fire begins to burn in earnest and Steve appears from the woods carrying two rabbits from your snares, you might be the happiest you have ever been in all your years on this earth.

/

Once you have eaten, you're the one who brings up the point you all know you need to discuss.

"So," you say quietly, one eye on Christina who has found a butterfly to chase through the grass. "What is our plan from here?

Quiet settles over the group of you, hovering above the fire.

"You're the mastermind, Mykes," Pete says. "Got any ideas?"

Myka shakes her head and shrugs. "Only that we need to move. My father may not bother to chase us—you are all replaceable as slaves, and I've been more trouble than anything for years as far as he's concerned. But to be sure, we need to be long gone by the time the games end and he's got time to think about it."

"Okay, so that means we can't just stay here, which was my first thought," Steve says.

Leena shakes her head. "Even if it weren't too close to the city, we'd drive each other nuts in a few weeks with nobody else to talk to."

"What about travelling to another city?" Claudia asks. "A smaller one, maybe. Saying we're Roman and starting over as small-scale merchants or something."

Myka shakes her head at that. "You, and Pete and Steve and I could maybe get away with that. But Leena and Helena both have foreign accents and—forgive me—parts of your appearance that people will notice, between Leena's complexion and Helena's scars. Nobody will believe they aren't slaves unless they have manumission paperwork to show for it."

"Well," Pete offers, "but if they lived in houses the rest of us owned, people would just assume they were _ours, _and—"

In the corner of your eye you see Leena stiffen in indignation and feel your eyebrows climb, incredulous. Myka's arm slips around you.

"No," Myka says. "Not an option."

"There's no difference between living like a slave and living as one," you say. "I won't do that and I will _not_ put my daughter through it, especially after all Myka and Claudia have done to-"

"Helena," Myka says quietly, squeezing your hip. You look at her and she tips her chin toward your daughter, who has stopped playing in the grass to look at you.

You swallow hard. "Everything's fine, darling. Look, there's another pretty butterfly for you to chase, there."

She furrows her brow at you, then sighs and begins to run after the butterfly, arms outstretched and flapping like wings.

After a long moment, Claudia speaks up again.

"I might—I mean, this is kind of crazy, so I don't really know about—it's probably silly, but—it might be something—it's not like we have a lot of options, so—"

"Spit it out, Claudia," Steve says softly. "It can't be worse than the ideas we've had so far."

The girl lets out a long breath. "Well, you—have you heard of Joshua Donovan?"

Myka stiffens against you, and you see Pete sit up a little straighter across the fire.

"The Gaulish warlord?" Pete asks carefully.

Claudia rolls her eyes. "If by 'warlord' you mean 'military leader who has managed to protect his people and fight off advances by Romans after he lost most of his family,' then yeah, he's totally a warlord."

"I've heard of him," Leena says, "and if I've heard of him even though I've been basically stuck in the ludus for years, then I'm sure everyone here has heard of him."

You nod, and you see Steve nod, too.

Claudia inhales sharply and looks down. "He's my brother."

"Your brother," Myka echoes.

Claudia nods.

Steve shakes his head. "Are you suggesting that we—"

"Leave the Empire? Track him down? Settle in his village in Gaul? Yeah, all of those things." Claudia's shoulders slump. "I told you it was a crazy idea."

"Do we know where he is?" you ask.

Claudia shrugs. "Kind of? He's… north?"

Pete clears his throat. "He's been settled near the sea far to the north for awhile now. The Empire's not really interested in expanding up there anymore and I hear he's not too far from the border, just hanging out with his people, raising livestock and stuff." He sighs. "Sorry I called your brother a warlord, Claudia."

Claudia shrugs. "It's OK." She takes another breath and squares her shoulders. "I mean, sure, it would be great for me to have my brother back, but this could be good for a lot of us. Like, for Steve and HG and—and Myka—" the name rushes out through Claudia's quirked lips, and you realize that she's thrilling at the freedom to use Myka's given name. As a house servant she had always been bound to titles, in the past. "For Steve and HG and Myka, you could all live like you want to, you know? My people are okay with that."

The sea to the north is a long way away, you know. And none of you save Claudia speaks the language of that area of Gaul.

Leena sits up straighter and runs her fingers through her hair. "I say we go for it," she says, firmly.

Myka's fingers tighten again on your hip. "Me, too."

You turn toward her. "It will be a hard adjustment," you say, quietly. "Life outside Rome is very different from life inside it. There are no bathhouses, or aqueducts, or villas with atria and exedra and sleeping rooms apart from living rooms. And you will have to learn a new language, and you won't have slaves to tend to you."

Myka licks her lips once and swallows hard. "I know," she says. "Will—will you help me learn? Can you be patient with me?"

You smile. "Of course, darling."

She bites her lip and smiles at your endearment. "I don't think I was built to be a Roman anyway. I say we go for it."

"All right," you say, "me too."

"I'm in," Steve says.

All gazes turn to Pete, now, who shakes his head, looks down, and back up again. "If my mother could see me now," he says. "Let's start packing."

/

Once all your supplies are packed up, the horses are too overloaded to carry any passengers save Christina, who clings happily to a tuft of Artemis' mane as you lead the mare down the road.

You have concocted a cover story, should you need to tell one: Pete and Myka are a Roman couple and Christina is their daughter. The rest of you are their slaves. Leena is Pete's handservant—it's unusual, but not unheard of, for men to take female body slaves—and Claudia is Myka's. You are responsible for Christina, and Steve is responsible for the horses and the equipment.

Myka has spent most of her coin preparing for this journey. It wasn't much to begin with, limited to allowances given her by her father. But she has brought a small bag of jewelry and tokens she can sell. Leena and Claudia have some money saved from gifts and tokens they've received over the years.

You notice, when you're packing, that Myka doesn't have her sword.

"Where is it?" you ask her.

"I traded it," she says.

"Oh," you respond. "I'm… I'm sorry to hear that. I know you loved it."

"It was Sam's," Myka says softly. Her gaze drifts up, to where Christina sits over your shoulder. "I think he would have approved of the trade, though," she adds, and smiles.

/

Myka insists that you camp your first night outside Cosa. The following morning, she and Claudia venture back into the city and return mid-afternoon with a cart and a mule.

Pete greets her wide-eyed when she arrives. "How did you-?"

"My sister," Myka says. "Now we can load our supplies in the cart and ride the horses."

You shake your head. "She's given you a cart to use to flee the Empire?" you ask, incredulous.

Myka smiles a little. "Some things transcend class prejudices, I guess." She shrugs. "She has a daughter."

/

For a long time, you can't bring yourself to be out of sight of your daughter, even for a moment, even as she becomes comfortable with the rest of your motley family.

It's with great trepidation, three weeks into your trip, that you ask Leena if she'll watch Christina for you for an hour while you go to set snares. Leena smiles, and squeezes your hand, and tells you that, yes, of course she will.

Two weeks after that, Claudia asks in faux-spontaneity if Christina would like to camp out with her and Leena that night.

"Yes, Mummy, can I?" Christina asks, delighted.

Claudia winks at you, and you shake your head, smiling.

"Yes, darling, as long as you promise to listen to everything they say."

"Yay! I will!" She throws herself into Claudia's arms.

In your tent, that night, Myka loves you slowly with gentle fingers and soft lips and firm tongue. She spins invisible threads from all of your limbs and winds you tight, tighter, until you are gasping and begging for her, until you have given yourself over completely to her touch, until you have nothing, feel nothing, _are_ nothing but your desire for her. In that long moment you will give her all of you, you will become whatever she needs, you will do whatever she asks. And when finally, _finally_, she gives you release, her fingers deep inside you, she muffles your cries with lips wet and sweet with the taste of you.

Languidly she kisses you in the aftermath, and you realize she has made you not her slave but her goddess, that she has not owned you but worshipped you.

When she begins to slip her hand free, you stop her.

"What did I ever do to feel this?" you murmur. Your body pulls on hers and her eyes flutter closed. "What did I do to deserve you?" you breathe.

"I—I don't—"

You silence her with your lips and turn her onto her back, only then freeing her hand to push it and its mate above her head. And then you don't make her beg, you don't make her wait. You press her up to and over the glorious edge again and again, with your tongue and your lips and your fingers and your thighs, until she grasps you by the shoulders and lifts you away, gasping, her body glistening in the moonlight that filters through the seam between the tent flaps.

"You have me," she whispers breathlessly, "you have all of me."

/

You are weeks into a journey that will take months.

Moment by moment, the future slips into the past. Dreams become memories. Bruises fade, and happiness begins to dilute the pain that fills the barrel of your past. You have changed the rule of the game, flooded the board with your polished stones.

"Mummy," Christina says one morning as you and Myka are rolling up your tent. "What are you thinking about?"

"Hmm? Nothing in particular, darling. Why?"

Myka grins and bites her cheek at you as she picks up her end of the tent. "You're smiling to yourself," she says.

You grin wider at that. Yes, you suppose, you are.

* * *

**Given the Bering/Wells fans' fondness for angst, pain, and misery, I'm half expecting hate mail that says "How could you do this to me? I HATE happy endings!" So, uh, sorry?**

**There will be an epilogue.**

**Incidentally, my cursory Wikipedia-level research indicated that some ancient Gaulish communities, especially Celtic Gaulish communities (which I've tried to imply is Claudia's background, since she and Helena can understand each other's languages) were all about sex between men. That probably didn't translate to committed same-sex relationships, and I couldn't find anything about sex between women, but hey. Poetic license, again.**

**A million thanks to the people who have taken a minute to review this story or PM me about it along the way. This thing has kind of eaten my soul, in both the good and bad ways, for a couple of months now, so it's meant a lot to me to hear about what has and hasn't worked for everyone, and that people have become invested in the story.**


	14. Epilogue: Games and Dreams

You leap awake in the grey hour before dawn to the sound of your daughter's voice: "Mummy. Mum. Wake up."

You are sweating and shaking, exhaling in shuddering gasps, blinking in confusion at the beams above your head that support the thatch of the roof above you.

"Mummy. You were having another nightmare."

You turn to look at her, your Christina, where she kneels on the floor beside the slightly raised platform where you sleep. If you close your eyes, you know you'll feel the residual sting of your dream across your back. If you speak, you'll feel the hoarseness of your voice slipping from your throat, tired from days of screaming that happened close to three years ago, now, but feel fresh in your mind as the echoes of your dream fade away.

"Yes, darling," you say softly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

"I know," Christina says. "It's okay." She tips her head to one side, eyes gazing unflinchingly into yours. The nightmares never haunted you at the ludus, nor for the first weeks after you fled Rome and began your trek to the northern edge of unconquered Gaul. It seems, in retrospect, that your psyche waited for your body to feel safe before beginning to torment you with the trauma to your mind. Christina's disappearance, your crime, your beatings, your long hours spent in darkness, your fear for Myka, your terrifying temptation confronted with a trident—all of these memories began to revisit you in your sleeping hours.

The first time, on a cold evening in your tent, you woke yourself up shouting, and then broke into sobbing like an infant as your waking mind tried to parse dream from reality. Christina had begun to cry beside you, frightened by your unconscious outburst, and Myka, blessed Myka, had done all she could to soothe both of you. Your cries had woken your travelling companions, too, who descended upon your tent in mere moments.

"Nightmare," Myka had said to them, you remember, even as she clutched you close and stroked Christina's hair. Claudia had crawled in with you and lifted Christina into her lap as you had found yourself devastatingly unable, in that moment, to behave as a mother should.

The following day Pete had taken you aside and explained that he had them, too—that his army training had taught him to find ways to sleep in silence but that he had nightmares of war, of the arena, of the dungeon where you'd both been held, awaiting your doom. "If you need to talk about it," he'd said, "well… maybe we can help each other."

Christina is seven, now, and growing up faster than you can keep up. She is no longer frightened by your nightmares when you have them. She is too accustomed to them for that. Your pride stings from how often this happens: that she, your daughter, must soothe you from your bad dreams, when those duties should certainly be reversed.

Still, when she wordlessly lifts the edge of your fur and climbs into bed with you, wrapping her arms around your waist and tucking her head under your chin, you drop a kiss onto her crown and breathe a soft sigh of relieved thanks. You got used to sleeping with Myka pressed against you, and now it's hard to sleep alone.

In the grey pre-dawn, you let your eyes slip shut and find a modicum of peaceful rest until daylight.

\\

The journey had been hard on Myka, as you had known it would be.

Her heart and intentions were pure, but she was still an upper-class Roman woman, accustomed to houses heated by hypocaust and to daily warmed baths. She had a taste for wine and fine foods, and had lived most of her life with days built around leisure more than work.

In the first few weeks of travel, she would find herself making casual demands of Claudia – "Fix the tear in this dress, please," or "I'm going to bathe in that creek; come and help me." Sometimes, she would catch herself and rephrase the order as a friendly request, but sometimes you would, as gently as possible, need to remind her that Claudia was her friend and equal now, and no longer her handmaiden.

Claudia, of course, was also too deeply entrenched in her own history of servitude—and too undyingly faithful to Myka—to be able to resist the commands when she received them.

"I'm sorry," Myka would say sheepishly, following your reminders. "Habits die hard. I'm trying."

But the endless traveling, the changes in behavior and relationships and quality of life, wore on her. She became irritable and frustrated. Pete was the only one who could reach her in those moments, because he was the only one who could relate to the experience of losing the luxuries of Roman life.

It tore at your heart, during those days, to watch her as she struggled, so clearly unhappy. You tried to reach out to her more than once, but she refused to discuss her frustrations with you.

"She feels guilty about it," Pete explained to you, eventually. "Like she shouldn't have the right to be having such a hard time with this, compared to everything you went through after you left your homeland."

Late that night in your tent, in quiet whispers, you told her that you respected everything she felt, and begged her to share it with you.

"I don't know if I can," she'd replied, quietly.

The following day, you had passed a fork in the road marked with a sign that pointed to Genua, and you noticed Myka's eyes lingering on it.

With a deep breath, you had pulled your horse alongside hers and said, "If… if you want, we could take you there. Claudia, or Leena, or Steve, one of them might stay with you, if you asked. I would… I would understand."

You couldn't offer yourself, of course. Pete couldn't, either. You are both still wanted for murder, and could never be safe inside the empire's borders.

Myka had looked at you for a long moment, and then back at the sign. Then closed her eyes, and dropped her head forward, exhausted.

\\

The morning greets you with a rare display of winter sun between the habitual days of rain. You brace yourself against the crisp chill as you get up and begin to build the morning's fire in your hearth; you send Christina to visit Leena to fetch milk for your breakfast.

A few months after you arrived in this village, Leena became close to a young cattle-herder. They eventually married and now live together in a house on the edge of town; you visit one another almost daily.

When Christina comes back, she bursts through the doorway like a bolt of lightning, clutching the jug with two hands while bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"They're coming!" she exclaims happily. "Leena saw their campfire on the horizon when she let the herd out this morning. They'll be home later today!"

Your smile pulls across your face and through your eyes. "That's wonderful, darling. Let's eat quickly—we have much to do before she gets home!"

\\

Because Myka didn't leave you, of course. Much later, she would tell you, with some embarrassment, just how close she had come—as though you couldn't tell from the look on her face in that long moment by the signpost.

But once you found your way to Joshua Donovan's village, a remote Gaulish outpost on the edge of Germanic territory near the ocean to the north, things became easier for her.

As soon as you felt safe, like the community had accepted you, you selected a plot of land and began to build a house from stones and logs and cow pat. Pete took the plot of land beside yours and you worked together, helping each other at every stage, from the foundation to the thatching of the roofs. You built sleeping platforms—one for you and Myka, one for Christina—and stocked them with warm, soft furs. You built a low table for eating and gathering, and a set of shelves where you could store pots, cups, and plates. It's all one room, small enough that the hearth in one end heats the whole space easily. It's rough compared to the polished marble villa where Myka has always lived, but it's warm and solid and filled with the trappings of your small family's life together.

You picked the location strategically, as it was near the small river where the village got its water. Once the house was built, you began to make plans to improve it for your beloved Roman, to bring her some of the comforts of her home.

Claudia, as it turned out, had a brilliant knack for precisely this kind of engineering. Together, you built miniature wooden aqueducts that could siphon water directly into your homes. And then, in the corner of your house nearest the hearth, you used stones and sand and straw to build a small bath with a very small hypocaust in its foundation.

Myka would, slowly but surely, find a place for herself, here in Gaul. She began to teach Christina to read and write Latin, and they lamuse one another by leaving each other notes scrawled with a scrap of coal on a flat stone that you keep near the fireplace. Myka has offered to teach you, too, but you decline every time; you do prefer the spoken word, it's true, but more than that you like that Myka and Christina can have that to share just between the two of them. They are kindred spirits, Myka and Christina: quiet, thoughtful intellectuals, both.

Myka, over time, had discovered she had both a fondness and an aptitude for hunting. As she began to learn the local language, she made friends who invited her on short trips for wild game. She accepted, initially, just to be friendly, but eventually grew so fond of the adventure that sometimes she and Pete would go off on their own with their horses for a day or two in the hope of bringing home venison.

They have been gone for two days, but now they're coming home, and you have much to prepare before they arrive.

"Go tell Kelly while I prepare our breakfast," you say to Christina. The woman, a healer, has become quite fond of Pete, and he clearly returns her affections. She'll want to know that he's almost home, you suspect.

Christina grins and bolts back out the door.

Several hours later, your preparations are complete. The house is clean, the bath is filled, a stew is simmering over the fire. You are crouched to stoke the flames in the firebox for the hypocaust, just outside the house, when you feel familiar hands slip over your shoulders.

"I shall have to put a bell on you, darling," you say, smiling. "With all of this practice you get stalking wild game, you've become far too good at sneaking up on me."

"Mmm," Myka murmurs as she crouches behind you, pressing up against your back, "But where would be the fun in that?"

You cock an eyebrow and slowly turn in her arms. "Any luck in the hunt?"

Myka shakes her head a little and shrugs. "Not really, I'm afraid. A few pheasants, that's it."

"Better luck next time, I suppose, though I do enjoy a pheasant dinner."

"I know you do," Myka says, smiling, her arms fitting snugly around your waist. "But unless I'm much mistaken, I can smell something cooking from in there, and I think there's a hot bath waiting for me in the house."

"Indeed," you reply. Then you lean closer, until your lips brush her ear: "Christina is spending the evening at Steve's. Liam has promised to begin to teach her to do metalwork."

"Lucky girl," Myka whispers back, a little breathlessly.

"Indeed she is," you say as you stand up, tugging her hands to pull her with you. But then, quick as a stag she spins you around and presses you against the back wall of the house, her body flush against yours and her lips wrapped around your earlobe.

"I wasn't talking about Christina," she murmurs lasciviously, as her thigh slips between yours.

"Is that – is that so. Well," you gasp, "lucky me, then."

\\

You won't tell her that when she leaves on these hunting trips, you, too, take smithing lessons from Liam.

You'll keep it a perfect secret until, a year later, you will have managed to forge her a new sword, its wooden hilt similar to the one on Sam's gladius with one important difference: on its smooth wooden pommel, you will have Christina use coal to trace out the letters that spell Myka's name. Then you will use a small chisel to follow her lines exactly, engraving them into the wood, labeling the sword as hers.

You will present it to Myka as a gift from you and Christina together. Myka will cover her mouth in surprise, her eyes will well up with tears and she will wrap her arms gratefully around both of you.

You will continue to build your life here. People throughout the village will ask for their own heated baths, and you will begin to earn a decent amount of coin from building them, together with Claudia.

You will think, from time to time, of the game you and Myka used to play, on the floor in your cell in the ludus. Sometimes, you will contemplate making a board so you can play again. But your interest for the game, with its rigid rules for movement and goal of defeating an opponent, has waned.

You will look, as you are looking right now, at the nude body of a breathtaking Roman woman, one whose father had owned you as his slave, as it slips into a warm bath in the corner of the small Gaulish home you share with her.

You will watch her teach your daughter basic sword-fighting skills, using sticks instead of swords so that nobody will get hurt.

You will feel the reverence of her touch as her fingertips trace the scars, thick but sensitive, that lace your back—scars from a beating that will always haunt you, but that you cannot truly regret because it delivered you, ultimately, into her arms.

You have lost interest, you realize, in little black and white pieces on a board of squares.

"Join me, love?" she asks, from the bath, extending a hand toward you, palm up.

With a small smile and no words, you undress, and you do.

* * *

**So this "brief epilogue" ended up being longer than my shortest chapter. Uh, whoops? But as I was planning it I realized that nobody would get through the crap I've put Helena through without some level of lingering trauma, so I wanted to pay that some attention.**

**Particular thanks to tantedrago for giving me some insight into the climate and landscape of the part of the world where I've imagined the crew has ended up. I didn't end up using it in quite the level of detail I'd originally planned, but it was extremely helpful nonetheless. Also, thanks to her for squeeing at me via PM-very little beats knowing that people are getting excited over the stuff I've been writing.**

**Shout-out to hermitstull (over on AO3) as well for all the positive feedback along the way, and to Jess82x for chasing me on updates.**

**Thanks again to everyone who's come along on this ride with me. It's been fun (between the blood and guts and angst, anyway!).**


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